


Andromeda Rising

by Mikaiyawa



Series: Andromeda Rising [1]
Category: Andromeda universe, Cinema Bizarre, Lovex, Panik, Serenity universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:28:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 59,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikaiyawa/pseuds/Mikaiyawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Family is the most important thing, especially when you're running a tramp freighter on the edges of survival. We make an odd family, Nietzschian, Ssulli, human and A.I., Alliance and Commonwealth, but we are family. And we will fight to stay together, no matter how much we bicker among ourselves never forget we are a family. And family sticks together. ---Jack E. Strify---</p>
            </blockquote>





	Andromeda Rising

Luminor didn’t like this job, the whole place left a stink that lingered in the back of his throat.  He had a deep and abiding hatred of slavers in general and this man in particular was bidding to take the top spot on his short ‘must be removed from existence’ list.  The feel of suffering permeated the air of the space station; he couldn’t call this relic a drift, and made it impossible for David to leave the Maru-ka.  Thank all the lesser gods that Timo had chosen to keep watch on the ship and would help keep the sensitive Callistan distracted from the pain and misery lurking just outside the airlocks.

If he could have manufactured an excuse he’d have emulated the short Nietzschian and avoided walking around this pit.  He felt like he’d need a week of hot water to scrub the slimy feel from his skin.

Maybe he could convince Strify to hit that little planet off the Maracas route, the one with all the islands and hot springs after this.

Jan and Linke had called dibs on ship duty, the bastards, but had been set to playing tourist in the mercantile area of this little hell pit instead.  The _look_on Juri’s face when he realized he was in charge of keeping **both** tech geeks in line had been amusing, at least until he’d learned that he, Franky and Romeo had to go with Strify to deal with the client.  Yu got ship duty, mostly because he’d taken a blaster hit to the side while retrieving the information and ugly little trinket this slime ball wanted and wasn’t fully fit for the fight David said was coming.

Not that David had used those words; he’d just said Timo and Yu needed to stay on the ship because of trouble.  Romeo and Strify had exchanged a long speaking look and rearranged who was doing what.

After the horrors of the Morglu slave pits none of them would _ever_ discount a funny feeling coming out of David.  His funny feelings had gotten six men out of there alive and back onto the Maru-ka where Juri, Timo and Linke had been anxiously waiting.

That they had been waiting for _four_ men hadn’t been relevant.  After thirty hours Strify wasn’t going to just dump David and Romeo.  Those thirty hours of hell had made them part of the crew.

Timo hovering over David and David snuggling into the short Nietzschian’s arms had bumped them closer to the family column.  Three years of traveling together and they were solidly kin, in spite of all the differences in blood and ideology.

A pained yelp, too high pitched to come from a human throat yanked Luminor out of his idle musings and refocused his attention on the doors sliding open in front of them.  The short, enormously fat and distinctly unlovely man he recognized as their client, but the tiny thing on the floor in front of him was unfamiliar.  He was a petite man, maybe 150 centimeters tall and correspondingly slender.  His hair was dark brown, collar length and spiking everywhere, his skin a soft creamy gold, he had delicate hands and sharply cut facial features.

In short he was a lovely little thing, even with a fresh bruise rising on one high cheekbone.

Their client took a step forward and raised his fist again, sending the small man scuttling backwards clumsily on the floor.

Luminor moved forward and went to one knee to shelter the smaller man in his arms.  Strify spoke, distracting the obese bully.

“Mr. Tully I presume?”

The big man stopped his advance and put on his professional face for Strify; his beady pale blue eyes flicked over Romeo and dismissed him as muscle then lingered on Franky before flicking over to him and lingering in a way that made Luminor faintly sick and then finally resting on Strify’s face.

“Yeah.  You Cap’n Strife?”

Strify managed a chill and rather distant smile, from the cold hard gleam in his blue eyes he was a very short half step from raging fury.  He’d never dealt with bullies well, even before his stint with the Morglu. And seeing a man who was ten centimeters and _easily_ fifty kilos heavier backhanding the much smaller and lighter man didn’t sit well.

“You got a pretty crew.”

Luminor kept his sigh behind his teeth and rummaged into his small pouch for a bit of the salve he used for all kinds of things.  Among other things it was good for bruises.  He knew without looking that Strify’s smile had gotten a full ten degrees colder.

“I like having pretty things around me.”  Strify’s tone was so mild that it was a warning.  Luminor sighed softly and flipped the lid of the jar open and dabbed a bit onto his fingers then gently reached for the darkening mark on the small man’s face.

He had extraordinarily pretty eyes, rather like fine powdered emerald and sapphire floating in a base of Tellurial mercury.  The poor thing didn’t seem to know quite what to make of someone treating him decently; he just stayed very still and warily watched as Luminor’s fingers came closer.  He didn’t flinch away though so Luminor quickly dosed the bruise as Strify continued the chill dance of a man dealing with a client he really didn’t care for.

If they weren’t going to get a ridiculous amount of money for the bits of information and that ugly little trinket he was quite sure Strify would have walked.  But they needed the money, a larger crew meant more mouths to feed, more people to keep fit and happy.  And Strify was determined to keep his odd little family healthy, happy and together.

 Heavy sounding clunk told Luminor that the trinket had been set down on the desk that the big ugly used to separate himself from his underlings and hired help.

“You like my little Kiro?”

Luminor looked up into the beady blue eyes and managed to not flinch.  Quietly he thanked his teachers, Companion training was serving him very well here outside the Alliances borders.

“He’s very beautiful.”  Luminor felt the smaller man twitch a little and had to stifle a smile.  People always expected his voice to be higher than the rich deep baritone it was. But they also expected him to be retiring and docile and Strify could and sometimes _would_, tell them what a lie **that** was.  Strify didn’t keep fragile lilies on his ship, or in his bed.

The cold eyes got lost in folds of facial fat as the man passed off his version of a smile.  It gave Luminor the creepy crawls, but he kept his revulsion hidden behind a gracious mask.  He could feel tiny tremors in the slender body sheltered in his arms.

“Pretty, yes, very pretty.”  The big man leaned down, putting his piggy nose and foul mouth centimeters from Luminor’s nose and Luminor had to hide a wince at the rank smells that wafted over him.  “Just be careful, he bites.”  False confidence over the big man straightened and waddled back to his chair to continue his business.

The small man, Kiro, bared his teeth in a split second snarl of dislike at the big man and suddenly Luminor could almost hear David’s voice echoing in his ears.

_“Free the Resk viper when you find it.”_

It hadn’t made sense at the time.  But now as Luminor rose to take his place back beside his shipmates it did.  He fought to remain impassive as Strify concluded their business with the fat man and was offered the use of the smaller man’s services for their stay as they ‘verified’ that the trinket was genuine.

Strify managed to protest just the right way for the big man to insist.  Romeo quirked an eyebrow at the slight limp the little man was trying to hide as he lead them out a different way than they’d come in. Franky took Luminor’s elbow in a pretty gesture as they walked out following the tiny brunet.  It gave him the bit of support he needed to access the net through his wireless port hidden under the graceful folds of his scarf.  The security here really was appalling, they hadn’t been given more than a cursory visual scan before being allowed in.

The low profile wireless jack he had was proving worth every throne they’d spent on stealing it, Luminor had a wire frame schematic of the station up before the door slid closed behind them.  He jacked right into the stations security and safety systems and could see where they were going, where the Maru-ka was and that there was a massing of green life specs just around the next corridor.

“Jack, plan B,” Luminor let go of Franky’s arm and was rummaging for a more selective set of tools out of his pouch.

“Plan B it is.”  Strify reached under his vest and pulled out the nasty little blasters he favored.  Romeo sighed and reached up the back of his bulky jacket and pulled out a light little rifle, like Strify’s blasters lethally overpowered for its size.

Franky grimaced and began assembling several small bombs out of the bits he’d hidden about his person.  He’d have much rather had his crossbow, but it was impossible to hide even in his current and rather flamboyant clothing.

Little Kiro was looking at them like they’d lost their minds, only to be expected really. They tended to look rather harmless until riled, then they pulled the most amazing assortment of toys out. His pretty eyes widened as Luminor finished assembling a probe.

Mr. Tully needed to protect his obedience chip codes far better than he did.  Luminor yanked Kiro’s shirt up, making the smaller man flinch away and snarl a little.  But when Luminor went right to a spot on his hip and hit it with an arc from the probe his face relaxed into a perplexed expression.  That was the main tracking chip, to get the others would take David’s clever hands, and wouldn’t be painless.  But Luminor figured the little man wouldn’t care, and he’d yanked a huge chunk of Tully’s data just in principle, a lot of it was tagged ‘Kiro’, ‘Pet’ and ‘Jobs’, no telling what it was or how useful it would be.  It gave him a little bit of a headache, but it had been worth it to yank data like this in the past.  He stood unsteadily and found the main control chip implanted at the base of Kiro’s skull and murmured a warning before he shorted it out as well.

The small man didn’t even whimper even though it had to have hurt him.

“We need to go left, service corridor.”  Luminor arced his probe over the lock and waited until Franky and Romeo were through before sharing a quick kiss with Strify.

“Have I mentioned how much competence turns me on?”  Luminor smiled at the look in Strify’s eyes.

“Only every day love.”  A shot over their heads got them both moving after their ship mates.  Kiro hesitated for a long moment then darted after them, slamming the door closed and dogging it closed manually behind them.

Luminor reached down and pulled the smaller blaster out of his boot top and offered it to the tiny man, ignoring the shocked and dubious looks on his ship mates faces for the moment.

“Can you shoot?”

He collected a blink and a long measuring stare from those pretty blue green eyes before a slender hand accepted the small pistol.

“Yes.”  The voice was soft and far deeper than he’d expected given the pitch of his earlier yelp of pain, but his Basic was unaccented.

“Communications for the station is down and ours is up.” Romeo wrapped an ear piece and mic around his neck and ear.  Strify grinned and pulled his ear piece up from where his shirt collar had hidden it as Franky did the same.

“We need to go straight for two hundred meters then down a level.”  Luminor didn’t need an ear piece; his neural net would work faster and better as he helped navigate them out.

“Jan, Juri and Linke?” Strify asked as they moved out at a trot.

“Jan’s got their port authority in a tizzy and Linke says he found something interesting.”

Romeo let out a low groan.  Interesting from Linke quite often meant highly illegal things, sometimes highly explosive things and almost always highly profitable things.  If they could find the right buyer for those ‘interesting things’ anyway.  Not that he’d _ever _complain about what those illegal things could do for him personally.  A large portion of his personal armory had started out life as one of Linke’s ‘interesting’ finds.  Strify let out a rude noise.

“As long as they make it back to the ship.”

“They’re closer than we are, down here Frank.”  Luminor smiled faintly as Romeo firmly held the other Companion back and took point himself, typical Nietzschian behavior.  That and Rom had his personal body armor on under his shirt.  He could take a hit or two if necessary.

~0~

Strify half turned to look back down the corridor and blinked in surprise as he watched their small, not guest, but not prisoner either, yanking hard on a small but clearly very heavy chest.

He glanced forward, Luminor had his eyes closed checking their route, Franky had taken advantage of the pause to make a few more of his lethal little bombs and plant them at key points of the corridor.  Rom was watching forward with the eerie stillness that only combat seasoned mercs could manage.

A rough scraping sound had him looking back at their little tag along.

Damn his curiosity.

Strify turned back and froze in shock when he saw the small man pull something wafer thin and clearly very flexible out of his sleeve.

That was a flex blade.

Strify watched as the smaller man took the blade to the hinges of the chest with brutal efficiency and kicked hard to get the lid off.  By then Franky had turned back as well and was reaching gently for the smaller man’s shoulder.  Strify’s breath caught as Franky’s hand stopped mere millimeters from the small man’s shoulder, his blue eyes gone round in shock.

Damn his curiosity.

He trotted over and looked down. Letting out a low whistle he looked back into the smaller man’s eyes.

“You just paid your way anywhere you want to go off this bucket.”  His words had a grumpy Romeo trotting back.  Rom’s only reaction was elevated eyebrows and a faintly respectful look at the small man as he tucked away his blade.  Between the five of them they managed to empty the chest of its cargo of precious gems without encumbering any of them very much.

Luminor checked their course again.

“Left, the way right is blocked.  Jan says they are almost done loading now.”

Strify swore under his breath, but didn’t ask ‘loading _what_’.  Jan probably hadn’t told Lumi, so he’d find out when they got back to the ship.

A smattering of gunfire lent speed to his feet and he caught the small brunets arm as they hustled down the corridor away from the tell tale shots.

“Run faster.”

“Oh shit.”

Strify swore and raised his blaster; he _hated_ it when Lumi went oh shit.  It **_always _**meant trouble.

Romeo dug in his pocket for a moment then extended his left hand and flipped his lighter open to strike a flame; Franky lit the fuse on one of his little bombs.

“To the right.” Lumi’s directions would keep them from accidentally blasting themselves as well, or worse holing the drift.

Franky threw with a speed that made Strify smile.  Franky looked so graceful, so pretty, but under the grace and the grooming was hard trained muscle and a wicked throwing arm.

“Down.” Strify grabbed the small man and the five hit the decking almost as one as Franky counted on one hand.  His third finger had folded down when the corridor just to their right erupted in flames.

“Run, stay left.  Home is three hundred meters past the double doors.”

Strify grabbed for their small guest again and all but threw him up to his feet and down the corridor to the left.  To give the smaller man credit he barely stumbled as he caught his footing and took off at a near sprint that caught him up to Romeo very quickly.

Luminor pulled both his blasters from their shoulder holsters as Romeo came up to the double doors and waited for them to get into position.

“How many?”  Romeo’s question was terse.

“Four and ugly.” 

Strify couldn’t stop the bark of laughter.

“Ugly?” Romeo requested clarification.

“The boss.  Does Jan have everyone else locked down?”  Strify knew who ugly was, and was in full agreement with the assessment.

“Linke does, and has taken a bit of glee in venting some areas to vacuum.”

“I won’t ask.”

Strify figured he already knew, but the dry tone of Romeo’s voice still made him smile.

“Three?”  Franky asked.

“Go.” answered Romeo.

They went through the doors shooting as they headed to the left, toward the Maru-ka.

~0~

The gunfight ended a bit less than ideally, Strify lapped at his bleeding lower lip and scowled up at their erstwhile employer.  He really hated flash bangs.  At least this one had been grossly underpowered and all his people were recovering quickly.  Not that any of them was showing it; even Rom was doing a creditable wobbly and uncoordinated act.

“Leaving so soon?” sneered Tully.

“The atmosphere was a bit lacking.”  Strify blinked and held tightly to his temper as he brought his head back to face his assailant.  Damn-it that _hurt_.  No wonder the little guy had a killer bruise on his cheek, Tully hit like a freighter.

His eyes narrowed as one of the surviving grunts dragged the small man over to Tully by his hair.  Tully smiled that smarmy smile of his and stroked that soft brown hair.

“Good Kiro, that’s a good pet.”

He could see the small tremor running down the smaller man’s spine, but managed to not curse.  They may have been played.

Then the big man screamed in pain and the small man was flying backwards from the retaliatory blow to his face.  Luminor was on his feet and had his scarf around one of the guards necks and was pulling tight, Romeo had another guards head in his hands and was twisting.  Strify resolved to not think about that sound if he could help it.  The third surviving guard was staring down at Tully with a horrified look on his face as the small man, Kiro advanced on him with a terrible and terrifyingly blank look on his pretty face.

Strify closed his eyes as the small man cut the guards throat without the slightest hesitation.

Franky let out a little sound of revulsion and Strify reopened his eyes and recoiled from the mess that once had been Tully.

The fat man’s face and body were swelling and turning black as he watched.

A low ~_thunk_~ got him moving again as Luminor dropped the dead weight of his guard.

“On that note, I think it’s time we left.”  Strify rolled to his feet and hauled Franky to his feet, shoving the shorter Companion toward the Maru-ka.  Luminor came up beside him and they shared a small smile and a wordless promise as the small hatch of the Maru-ka opened.

“Hurry up!” Jan yelled.  “Linke’s got the reactor set to go in under a minute.”

“Well **_fuck_**.”  Strify grabbed Luminor’s wrist and shoved the taller man toward the hatch, then grabbed Kiro by his shirt and all but threw him toward the ship as well.  He had some questions; it was hard to ask them of scattered atoms.

He stumbled but felt Romeo catch him under the elbow and shove him up into Juri and Jan’s hands as he hit the ramp.  Strify felt the ship shiver under him as he lay there panting and took stock.  Franky and Lumi were ruffled and mussed but looked to be alright, Romeo was cool as always even if his hair wasn’t in a neat fall anymore.  Jan looked hyper, Juri resigned and their little guest looked lost.

Then he looked around his hold.

His hold filled with crates and storage boxes strapped down neatly for transport.

He heard the engines whine and rolled to his belly to grab for the decking as the Maru-ka pitched hard and shot away from the dying station.

Strify yelped as he felt the decking drop under him, feeling like his stomach was being dropped then left behind as the ship took the first slipstream point.

Strify started laughing as he took in the warnings stenciled in nine languages over the sides of each crate and box.

He loved his crew.

~0~

The first hint Strify had that their newest crew member might be having some trouble adapting was about ten days after they’d left Tully’s Drift in a blaze of scattering atoms.  He found Kiro curled in a little ball in one of the smaller holds whimpering.  Kiro’s violent flinch away from his hands made Strify frown and back off a bit.

David said Kiro was Ssulli, and Ssulli as small as Kiro was tended to be nastily venomous, something their _dear _old friend Tully had learned the hard way.

Good riddance.

But it did bring up the question of what to do if Kiro wound up getting sick and bit one of them in delirium.  David was working on it, but had gotten an odd look on his face and said he didn’t really think it would be an issue if… if **_what _**he never clarified, when prompted on the subject David had given Strify a puzzled look.

  

  1. Kiro was healing well from that work, but he wasn’t quite as stable as he pretended to be.
  



Luminor had said he’d seen Kiro trembling and setting dishes down with far more care than was needed for plexi, especially plexi as battered as their dishes were.  Strify was headed down to the hold where he’d last seen the smaller man.  He was just passing the hatch to the room Yu slept in, and sometimes Luminor shared when he wasn’t sharing Strify’s cabin with him.

The gasp of pleasure only had him rolling his eyes.  Yu could be such a horn-dog.  Then he stopped and sidled closer to the open hatch and peered in, that moan hadn’t sounded like his pilot did when he was pleasuring himself.

His eyes widened at the sight of a head of silky brown hair bobbing slowly up and down over Yu’s groin.  Strify knew Yu wasn’t forcing things because he could see his pilot’s long fingers fisting desperately into his bedding as he thrashed his head and whimpered under Kiro’s ministrations.  The gasps and broken pleas reinforced Strify’s initial impression that this was fully consensual.

Clearly Kiro was stronger than he looked; Yu’s hips were securely pinned in place in spite of the taller man’s helpless thrashing.  Strify knew very well Yu loved getting sucked and couldn’t keep his hips still for all the gold in the universe.

He just hoped Kiro had his secondary teeth safely covered.

Yu whimpered and half curled up around Kiro, only now freeing one hand to tangle in Kiro’s hair.

“C, com… oh god… coming…” Yu was trying to pull Kiro off before he blew but Kiro wasn’t letting off the suction and Yu came with a cry.

Strify gulped and spun in place to head back to his quarters at a very fast walk.

God he hoped Lumi was still dozing in their bunk. After seeing that he needed a bit of relief from the ache that had sprung up between his legs.

~0~

Yu panted in reaction but stubbornly refused to pass out.  God that had been good but he’d be damned if it was going to be all one sided.  He tightened his hold on the handful of soft brown hair and tugged that pretty little face up and away from his hyper sensitized dick. 

Kiro had such pretty eyes, and right now they were filled with confusion, hurt and some indefinable need.  Yu couldn’t resist the urge to kiss the smaller man and groaned at the taste of himself in the other man’s mouth.  He wrapped his free arm snugly around Kiro’s slim hips and pulled his lean body flush to his own and groaned at the feel of a hard cock in Kiro’s trousers.  The smaller man fit so nicely in his arms.

He might not be human but his anatomy was close enough that Yu’s experience could make it good.  He wanted it to be good.  Yu took a certain amount of pride in his skill as a lover.  He might not be a trained Companion like Franky and his brother but he liked sex, loved the sights and sounds of a lover coming undone under him.

Yu nuzzled down Kiro’s throat and nipped at the junction where slim throat met smooth shoulder, not realizing the significance of Kiro’s little arch into the bite.  He kept kissing his way down the smooth slim chest, sucking hard at one nipple then the other, reveling in the tone of Kiro’s cries as he moved down.

He looked up as he sucked hard at a point just inside Kiro’s left hipbone and reveled in the way Kiro’s head was thrown back, his pretty eyes closed in abandon.  Yu moved lower, god how he loved this feeling.

Kiro didn’t have any body hair except what was on his head so Yu could taste the soft texture of the skin of Kiro’s balls with no obstruction.  He wondered at the way Kiro cried out and pressed up into this touches.  It was like no one had ever kissed or sucked him down here.

Yu shifted, rolling them over so he could nuzzle freely between Kiro’s thighs.  He tongued over that little bud of an entrance and felt his cock twitch at the heady cry he got out of Kiro.  Pointing his tongue he traced little circles then lapped over the twitching bit of muscle.  The spicy musky scent that he’d begun to associate with Kiro was strongest here.  He pointed his tongue again and jabbed in a little.

He smiled a little at the feel of both of Kiro’s small hands tangling in the uneven layers of his hair and tugging.  Yu wormed his tongue deeper and frowned to himself. 

He could feel ridges, scar tissue.  Someone had hurt this tiny creature writhing in pleasure under him.

Yu growled under his breath and went back to work, licking, nipping and sucking those tender bits of flesh, now determined to make this good in an unspoken apology for things in the past.  He shifted up and wrapped his mouth around a surprisingly large and very human looking cock and suckled gently.  He’d been half prepared for the involuntary jerk of slim hips upwards so he was ready when Kiro whimpered and hissed and bucked up into his mouth.  Yu sucked harder and tongued the slit with his tongue stud, and let Kiro thrust harder.  A little too deep and he had to swallow to keep from gagging.

Kiro let out a keening cry and writhed; Yu swallowed again and rolled the stud firmly into Kiro’s erection, just to see what Kiro would do.  Kiro thrashed his head, let out some needy pleading sounds and tried to thrust deeper.  Yu swallowed Kiro down all the way, cupping one hand under a sleek buttock for a bit of control and tried not to think of how hard he was getting just from hearing Kiro whimper and beg.

His nose had just touched soft skin when Kiro let out a near silent scream and came.  Yu blinked and swallowed quickly.

If he needed more proof Kiro wasn’t human he had it, his essence tasted vaguely sweet, not salty or bitter.

Yu let Kiro pull him up so they lay face to face and nuzzled, he wanted more kisses as he groped under his pillow for the bottle of slick he kept tucked away for his own pleasures.  He couldn’t stop the low groan that escaped as Kiro tentatively flicked his tongue out to tangle with Yu’s. Yu groaned and cupped Kiro’s face with his hand to gentle the wildness he could feel simmering just under the surface.

The whimper from Kiro made his blood hum, but the way Kiro kept his hands fisted tight in his hair told Yu that Kiro didn’t want him to stop.  That was a good thing; Yu didn’t really want to stop either.  His cock was hard again and he was determined to make this so good that Kiro wouldn’t want to leave.

He fumbled for the bottle again and clumsily flipped it open to dribble a little between Kiro’s thighs.  The chill liquid provoked a squeak of protest from Kiro, but that was soon diverted back into hungry moans as Yu suckled a spot on Kiro’s throat just under his jaw.

~0~

He was hot, too hot, and his belly burned both with lust and a hunger that had been to long denied.  Yu fingers were gentle, breaching him slowly and with such care it left Kiro a bit breathless.  At first he curved his fingers up, searching the area where a human male would have his prostate gland.  Not finding it he shifted and Kiro arched up hard as the back of one of Yu’s knuckles brushed his pleasure button.

Yu was fast, he realized what he had found and rolled his hand over to better massage that spot.  Kiro arched and thrashed as Yu fingered him, stretched him.  His gums were burning with a need he’d never expected to feel related to anything but feeding.

Then Yu bit at his neck, right where his throat and shoulder joined and Kiro lost it, keening in desperate need.  Yu’s mouth kept sucking even as his fingers slid out and something bigger nudged his entrance.

Kiro let out another keening cry and wrapped one leg around Yu hips and jerked up as hard as he could.  He could feel the heated cry that move forced out of Yu, feel those soft lips and the bits of hard metal threaded through them on his neck, feel the warmth of Yu’s breath as he panted.  He needed teeth and blood and knew he could get them.

Kiro writhed up again and this time Yu caught his hips and slammed in, raking his cock hard over Kiro’s internal need even as his belly rubbed over Kiro’s cock.

He fisted his hand tighter in Yu’s hair and groped for a shoulder with his other hand fisting over soft skin, mutely demanding more even as his voice pleaded for release.

“Gods, Kiro… _Kiro_…”  Kiro writhed harder; something was coming, almost ready.  Wait for it, wait… wait…

Yu screamed in pleasure as Kiro’s teeth sank into his shoulder.  He muffled his cry by biting Kiro back.  Kiro screamed.

Now.

He bit harder, sucking the bleeding wound marking Yu even as Yu marked him back.  Kiro clung desperately to awareness even as Yu overloaded for a second time and turned into so much limp weight over him.

Kiro whimpered and lapped at the wound until the bleeding stopped then dazedly let the world slide away.

~0~

  

  1. And there was a soft noise, like a large animal breathing right in his ear.
  



Kiro blinked and tried to force his eyes to focus.

He felt good.  Better than he had in a very long time and that alone was confusing him.

He tried to move and couldn’t.

_That_ woke him up the rest of the way.

He was pinned down by a single long arm wound firmly around his chest, held locked in place by a slim thigh resting between his legs.  There was a damp spot on the back of his neck, near where the noise was coming from.

The inescapable conclusion, he was in bed with someone.  Kiro blinked at the far wall in confusion.  Tully never stayed after fucking him and none of the other thugs would dare touch him.  Tully had vivisected the last one and spaced what was left still alive as a warning to not touch his property.

Then Kiro gave himself a mental shake, he wasn’t on Tully’s Drift anymore.

He also wasn’t suffering blood hunger anymore.  Kiro closed his eyes with a whimper, he wondered who he’d bitten and how bad things were going to get.

A contented sounding hum from the spot near the nape of his neck told him his bedmate was rousing.  A slight shift of hips told him his partner was well enough to still get hard.  That was reassuring at least; he couldn’t have done too much damage then.

Another contented hum and the feel of another arm winding around him had Kiro going very still and wondering just what the hell had happened last night.

He’d been fucked, but he didn’t hurt like he normally did.  Oh there was an ache, but it was a low distant one not the burning pain that was usual.  And the arms around him were gentle, cuddling him with a tenderness that made his insides twist up.

Then he saw the marking on the left hand stroking over his chest. 3, 6, 9.  Yu.

Kiro let out a low moan.  The pilot who had scooped him up off the decking his first day here, the man who’s messy black and red hair and warm gray eyes had captivated him right from the start.

The last person he’d wanted to bite.

The first person he wanted to bite.  Kiro whimpered at his conflicting emotions.

Kiro shivered at the feel of hard metal and soft lips kissing each vertebra in his neck, the gentle touches of those clever long fingered hands.  In time he knew his memory of last night would return.

He’d done something, something important last night.  More than sex, more than feeding.

Kiro gasped at the feel of Yu’s erection rubbing his buttocks and squirmed backwards into it.  The hitch in Yu’s breathing and the low moan of pleasure told Kiro that whatever happened last night Yu wasn’t unhappy about it.  Yu shifted the leg between Kiro’s away a little to rock his erection a bit more firmly into Kiro’s backside.

After a moment Kiro shifted a little, parting his thighs to let Yu’s erection slide between them then clamped them tight over the warm, hard organ.

“Oh god, Kiro.” Yu’s cry was a bit breathless and Kiro couldn’t stop the little gasp that escaped when Yu started sucking hard at a spot on the back of his shoulder as his hips started rocking steadily.  Kiro let out another soft cry as one of Yu’s hands reached down to stroke Kiro’s awakening cock in time with his languid thrusts.

Kiro squirmed back harder and rolled his hips into Yu’s hand.

“Oh yeah, unnhh, yeah… like that.”  Yu’s voice was husky and breathless.

Kiro whimpered as Yu’s strokes got harder, the movements of his hips more insistent, the soft words more heated and breathless.  His balls tightened, Kiro clamped his legs tightly together and writhed out his orgasm.

He came down feeling sticky, but cuddled securely chest to chest this time with Yu.  Kiro let out a tiny sound of dismay when he saw the bloodied mark on Yu’s left shoulder.

Not only had he bitten, he’d _chewed_.  Yu’s shoulder was a mess.

Gentle fingers forced his gaze up from the bloody mess and Kiro found himself staring into Yu’s warm gray eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

“I’m not.”

“But,” Kiro started then found his next words lost in a small whimper as Yu shifted down and kissed him.  They’d done this last night, a lot of kissing, both the gentle sweet kind they were doing now and more demanding hungry kissing.

When Yu let him up for air again Kiro was having a hard time remembering what he’d been going to say.

“Yu, you done yet?”  Kiro whimpered and buried his face in Yu’s chest, bad enough to have mauled his new ship mate, but to be called on it by everyone, it was mortifying.

The words Yu muttered under his breath before he answered Romeo left Kiro with the feeling he’d have rather had a little bit more time as well.

“What?”

The blocky Nietzschian poked his dark head in the hatch and grinned impishly at them, looking like David for a fleeting instant before his face settled into its more usual lines.

“Captain wants to know if you’re fit for duty or do we need to have Davii work on you again?”  Romeo slid in the hatch as Kiro wriggled around and sat up, the instant he did Yu’s wounds were exposed to Romeo’s sharp blue eyes. 

“The hells?  Yu what?”  Romeo’s voice trailed off at the look of mortification on Kiro’s face.  “You bit him.”  It wasn’t a question.

“I bit him,” Kiro agreed rather more meekly that he was happy with.

Romeo took a step back and yelled out the hatch.

“David!”  Kiro squeaked as Romeo then was on the bed pinning both of them firmly into the tumbled bedding.  “Don’t move, either of you.  Not until David checks you over.”

~0~

Romeo growled under his breath and tried in vain to keep his arm spines still as David gave Yu and Kiro a quick check over.  He tried to tell himself it was simple concern for a shipmate.  It wasn’t worry that the little Ssulli was still a threat to him, to David, to the rest of the crew.  Romeo refused to think to hard about that as he watched David gently cleaning the wounds on Yu’s shoulder.

“We found something.”

Romeo groaned as he turned to face Luminor.  He knew the tall, dark and far too pretty man was a very effective fighter but some part of his makeup had him wanting to shelter the slender man.

“We?”  Romeo was pretty sure Lumi meant he, Jan and Linke, but wanted to be sure.

“Jan, Chris and I.” Luminor flipped his fan open in a well worn and graceful gesture of nerves.  His green eyes never left Kiro’s face and Romeo noticed that the small man seemed jittery for some reason.

“Do tell love.”  Strify’s tone was rather arch and ironic.

Yu let out a pathetic little groan and flopped back into his bedding as all the rest of the crew crowded into the cabin that could sleep four but normally held only two.  Kiro’s eyes flickered around the assembled faces then settled back on where Yu was hiding his face under one arm.

“According to the All Systems Library,” Jan started, and Romeo closed his eyes.  He hoped this wasn’t about to turn into another Werner dissertation. “Ssulli use biting as a way to reaffirm kin and mate bonds.”

This time Romeo couldn’t stop the groan.  When he opened his eyes he saw Timo staring at Luminor with a wary look, Juri with an amused one and Strify with a look they normally only saw at the bargaining table with clients.

“So.  Translate that into simple Basic love.”

“He needs to bite us,” Franky’s voice was soft; the Companion lifted his eyes and locked his stare on Linke.  “That’s why Kiro’s so off balance.  His instincts don’t know what we are to him.”  Franky looked back at them. “Think about it, when was the last time you saw a single Ssulli traveling anywhere?  They move at least in pairs.”  Romeo blinked.  He knew Franky wasn’t the vapor brain he sometimes acted and absolutely looked like, but he’d reached his conclusion with almost Nietzschian speed.  When Franky stepped forward Kiro looked up at him with an almost frightened look in his eyes.

Romeo waited as Franky cupped Kiro’s soft cheek in one hand and smiled.

“It’s okay.  Unless you’d rather go home to your family.”

That provoked a reaction Romeo didn’t expect, a bitter bark of laughter and a suspicious shimmer of tears in the eyes.

“My family sold me!”  The little shivers became full out trembling as Kiro finally broke down.  “They sold me…”

Yu was up and had both arms around Kiro, pulling the smaller man close and stroking his hair as Franky bracketed the small man on his other side, whispering soft soothing nonsense.

Romeo shared a look with Strify.

When his friend, his near brother and his captain nodded Romeo stripped off his vest.

Family was important.

If Strify’s kin would ever unbend enough to call him for _anything_ Romeo knew Strify would go running.  But Valentines were a stubborn lot, and of all of them only Strify was ever likely to _need _help.  The rest were safe in their family enclaves and on their large family ships.

And Romeo knew it would have to be pretty damn dire for Strify to consider groveling to his stuck up bitch of a grandmother.

He knee walked on the bed up to where Yu and Franky held Kiro’s small frame cradled between them.  Romeo found his heart melting a tiny bit at the frightened face he tipped up to look at him.

Kiro was a fierce and determined fighter, a survivor, a worthy companion to his brothers.  Romeo slid his fingers around to cup the back of Kiro’s skull and tug him up to his knees.  He could hear rustles of shirts being stripped off all around him and knew this was the best option.

Up close Kiro really did have the prettiest eyes.

Romeo dropped a small chaste kiss on Kiro’s lips before lifting his chin and tugging Kiro’s face close.

“You’re sure.”

So much fear in that soft question.  Romeo wondered how old Kiro had been when he was sold.  Sexual maturity was such an uncertain way to determine adulthood.  And they had no way of knowing how long Tully had had him or if in fact Kiro was sexually mature for his species.

“Yes.”

Romeo closed his eyes and stroked the soft fine dark hair on Kiro’s head as the smaller man shifted forward and made his choice.

~0~

Timo swore and scrambled back to his feet as he moved toward the port side gun ports to see about making that idiot pirate see the error of his ways.

Right before blowing him out of existence.

“Starboard side guns ready.”  Romeo’s voice was calm in Timo’s ear as he yanked the hatch open and threw himself into the gunner seat.  He was strapping in and kicking the guns to life as he spoke.

“Port side ready,” he growled.

“Belly one ready.”  Juri, Timo noted, was as calm as ever.

“Topside set.” Linke, sounding slightly abstracted like he always did in a fight.

“Shields are in active mode.” Jan, Timo couldn’t stop the smile even as he sighted on an enemy and sent them spinning disabled away from the Maru-ka.

“Mayfly isn’t going anywhere.  That last hit has me jammed in place.  I’ll shoot what I can from here.”  Franky.  Timo snarled, if Mayfly was stuck that meant a spacewalk was in his future.  He _hated_ space walks.

“Oh shit.”  Timo let out a snarl.  He **_hated_** it when Lumi said oh shit.  “We have nine more hostiles’ incoming.”  He vented a savage burst of invective, and **that** was why he hated that particular phrase.  It _always_ meant bad things.

“Belly two set.” Yu’s voice, sounding like he was in pain.

The hell?  Belly two was Strify’s normal seat in a fight.

“Yu what the fuck are you doing?”

“Strify’s out cold, David’s working on him.  Lumi’s trying to scramble their coms so we can run.”

“If you’re shooting who the fuck is flying?” Romeo’s demand echoed the question in Timo’s head as he opened fire on another fighter.

“I hope everyone is belted in.”

Timo felt his eyes widen at the voice and clutched tightly at the control yoke in his hands as the Maru moved in a way he’d never expected.  She felt like she slid _backwards_ thirty meters then dropped into a hard left hand spiral… **away** from the nearest slipstream point.

The sounds of his fellow gunners swearing told Timo that he wasn’t hallucinating.

Kiro was piloting.

More than that he was piloting in the most unconventional way Timo had ever felt a freighter fly. It was completely insane, it was brilliant and more critically, it **worked**.

It was confusing the fuck out of the enemy.  Timo took a great deal of vindictive glee in blasting four fighters out of existence as they froze for the briefest of instants at the sight of the Maru-ka moving like she was one tenth her mass.

From the gleeful whoops from Franky and Yu the others were taking advantage as well.

Then Timo yelped as the Maru felt like she spun in place then launched hard back toward the slipstream point.  He felt his restraint harness strain then give under the stresses.

Timo clung to consciousness until he felt the odd little bit of weightlessness that preceded the hard lurch into slipstream.  Then he let the blackness take him.

~0~

Strify wrinkled his nose, there was that strange astringent smell again and something was tickling his nose.  He swiped his hand weakly at his face and was rewarded with a soft chuckle.

“Lumi?”

Strify pried his eyes open and looked up into the relieved green eyes of his lover.  The thing tickling his nose had been a lock of Luminor’s long black hair held in his lovers long elegant fingers.

“Welcome back.”

Strify groaned and tried to get his brain to work.

“What happened?”

“We got jumped at our rendezvous point.”

Strify groaned again as he tried to sit up, his ribs let him know they didn’t approve of the idea in the slightest and his head thumped warningly.

“How bad?”

Luminor helped get him settled in a more or less upright position.  Then made sure he had something to drink in his hands before he answered.  Strify just settled as comfortably as he could against his lover’s chest as he sipped and waited for answers.

“Yu has some bruised ribs from the cargo that took you out.  Timo separated a shoulder, but not as badly as he could have.  His harness broke under acceleration.  David says he’ll heal up in a couple weeks, probably faster than you and Yuki will.”  Luminor stopped and nibbled his lower lip for a moment, something that told Strify there was more, but that the tall man wasn’t quite sure how to tell him.

“What?”  Strify blinked, and then his brain caught up.  Yu was their best pilot.  “Wait, if Yu was hurt, who piloted?”

“Kiro did.”

Luminor turned slightly from where he was seated on Strify’s bed toward the door where Yu was leaning gingerly against the door frame. Strify winced at the purple and black marks over the pilot’s chest and the tender way the tall man held his arms.  But then he blinked.

“Kiro?”

Yu managed a crooked grin and caught his tongue stud in his teeth for a moment before answering.

“Yeah.  Cute little thing, stands about so high,” Yu held his left hand about Kiro’s height above the decking. “Big blue green eyes, brown hair, bites people, that Kiro.”

Strify felt particularly stupid, but Yu’s words made no sense.

“Kiro can fly?”

“Pilot’s the Maru better than me boss.”

Strify blinked and looked and Luminor for verification.  Luminor nodded and snuggled into his side a little closer, stroking one long fingered hand through Strify‘s hair.  Strify shifted up a little so his lover was leaning on him rather than the other way around.

“He managed to pull a set of fighter maneuvers with the Maru, and got us to safety with minimal damage to us, the ship and the cargo.” Luminor sighed and stroked his left hand over Strify’s hip before continuing.  “Franky found us another buyer, and at a better price.  He also made sure if the old one pops up again he’ll have some rumors to deal with.”

Strify smiled and buried his nose in Luminor’s soft hair, he never did figure out how the Companion made it so soft, or what flower it was that perfumed it.

“Rumors?”  This had to be good, Franky had such an innocent and open face that people never seemed to realize he could lie with the best hucksters on this arm of the galaxy.

Yu let out a delighted chortle.

“Everything from double cross, to got gunned down, to just plain old never showed up.  Franky’s _good_.”

Strify smiled again and rubbed his cheek over Lumi’s hair, he was getting tired.

“Good, is what we’d pay him for…” Strify paused and thought hard about those words.  “If we could afford to pay him.”  Strify knew he was getting maudlin.  “We really need to find a better way to make a living.”  His eyes slid closed and Strify felt Luminor shift to lay them both down.  He snuggled back into Luminor’s chest for several long moments until a sudden thought had his eyes popping back open.

“What new buyer?”

~0~

Kiro didn’t want to leave the ship.  Yu was trying to convince him he needed to so they could get him some clothing that would actually fit him over the hand me downs and things he’d gotten from the rest of the crew.  Timo and Jan were the only two even close to Kiro’s height and both of them were taller, with Timo being blockier as well.  As a result the only things Kiro owned that fit him were the clothes he’d left Tully’s Drift in and his boots.  Of those only his boots were still serviceable in any way.

They’d sold their official cargo, found buyers for a few crates of things they hadn’t found a use for from Tully’s and Jan had had a _very _good run at the casino just off the main drag.  Even better Franky had amused a number of clients; including a few female Nietzschian’s who had only wanted conversation.

Not so pleasing to Strify even though it was good for the accounts of the Maru, Luminor had found several clients as well.  Fortunately for Strify’s peace of mind they were predominantly massage clients.  The one client who had wanted sex was a _very_ young Nietzschian who wanted to learn a few things about pleasuring another man.

Strify had walked away, half seething.  He’d nail his lover to the mattress later tonight and remind him who he really belonged to.  He knew he had no reason to feel jealous, but seeing his lover with someone else made him twitch even if it was for purely innocent reasons.

Strify stalked up the back ramp to find Kiro still hovering in the shadows and Yu clearly losing patience.

“What?  I thought you would be painting the drift red Yuki.”

Yu raked a bit of red and black streaked hair out of his eyes.

“Kiro’s scared he’ll be recognized.”

Strify let out a little bark of bitter amusement.

“Tully’s didn’t have very many survivors.  And almost all of those that did are blaming Tully for his greed and for not having his safety fail-safes up.”  Strify was about to drop his vest when he saw how unhappy Kiro was.  Abruptly he changed his mind and stalked over, catching the short Ssulli by one wrist and all but dragging him toward the little cabin David had converted into a medical station.

There were a few canisters left from the last time he’d harvested the nanobots from his hair.  They were a specialty of his family and only family normally got the dratted things.  Self replicating nanobots, the reason he didn’t have to dye the blond patch in his hair every few weeks, the reason his lover had streaks of soft violet in his hair when they were alone, and the reason Yu had red streaks that never seemed to stay in the same place.

They were _his_ family, his blood kin could go hang.

“Sit.”  Strify shoved Kiro at the narrow cot and went rummaging.  He came back with two vials of nanobots, shears, a straight razor and a bed sheet.  The sheet he wrapped around a very confused Kiro as the smaller man perched warily on the cot.  The dark hair that reached just past Kiro’s collarbones got a quick and quite brutal trim, shorter in the back longer in the front.  Then it got razored into layers.  Only then did Strify uncap both vials of nanobots and dump them into Kiro’s soft dark hair.

“Yu,” he called.

“Yeah boss?” Yu was leaning against the hatch frame watching.

“Get my makeup kit, the ‘hiding in plain sight’ one.”

Yu trotted off and was back moments later with the heavy black case.  He set it down and watched as Strify gave Kiro a quick and dirty lesson in how to control his nanobots.  He had to smile when he saw the soft layers begin to stand out in sharp spikes, the top lighten to a clear golden blond and the sides and back darken to black.  The slight wave straightened to absolute smoothness.

Yu tongued his lip piercings, the spikes echoed the ones in his red and black hair and white gold patch echoed Strify’s look.  Somehow Kiro still looked like himself, but anyone who was looking for a plain Ssulli would see a striking young human man who was pretty enough to be a girl.  They just had to keep him from showing those lovely little secondary needles of his.

“Eyes closed.”

Clearly Strify was in a bossy mood, but Kiro obediently closed his eyes and let Strify work.

“Look up, over here.” Strify held one finger up to Kiro’s right.  Quickly Strify applied the eyeliner to that eye.  “Now over here.” Strify gestured with the tube up and to Kiro’s left and swooped in to paint the other eye when Kiro obeyed.  “Eyes closed again.” This time the tube was replaced with a soft brush and Strify dusted Kiro’s eyelids, first with black then a silver gray that glittered faintly in the lights.  By the time Strify finished painting a light layer of gloss over Kiro’s lips Yu was all for staying in and kissing it off the smaller man’s lips.

Yu waited as Strify viewed his handi-work with connoisseur’s eyes.

“Good enough for now.  Let’s go.”  He yanked the sheet off, grabbed Kiro’s wrist and dragged the confused and protesting man out of the cabin, across the hold and down the ramp.

Yu had to jog to catch up as Strify dragged Kiro toward the mercantile district.  He had to stifle his grin at the confused look on Kiro’s face.  It was worth being Strify’s pack mule to see Kiro being dressed up.

Seeing Kiro all in white made his cock twitch.  Seeing him in skin tight sim leather trousers made Yu want to peel them off. He’d never seen anyone look so edible in mourning colors.  Yu was so busy watching his small ship mate squirming to get the snug leather situated comfortably that he missed seeing Linke come up and whisper something to Strify.

He even missed Strify’s wicked grin.

Yu didn’t miss the bags being taken from him and handed over to Linke to take back to the ship though.  He gaped for a second, and then held his tongue at the wicked smirk on the techs face.  He was curious as hell but at the same time was absolutely sure he didn’t want to know, not with **_that_** smirk. The last time Linke had worn that smirk Franky had gotten a client who liked to watch and had spent all afternoon fucking his lover sideways and gotten a lovely bonus that had kept them fed for over a week.

At least it left his hands free to help Kiro get his trousers settled.  Kiro squeaked though as Yu ran his hands down his pert little backside then back up under the soft black of Kiro’s shirt.  He missed the smug look on Strify’s face, and missed the amused glances of a number of the local Nietzschian matrons.  Yu had more important things on his mind.

He wanted Kiro to kiss him.

~0~

Kiro squealed at the feel of hands caressing over his ass again and spun in place to swat Yu again.  He liked the other pilot a great deal, but this was getting ridiculous.  Romeo might find it amusing, but he wasn’t to one getting pawed in public.

Kiro froze when his wrist was caught in the firm grip of a Nietzschian not that much taller than he was.  His initial impulse was to kick and scream when the stranger pulled him flush to his body and ran an appreciative hand down Kiro’s back and backside.  Something made him hesitate.  Something about how the Nietzschian looked and smelled bothered him.

“Hello Xavier.”  Romeo’s voice, chill with civility in a way he’d never heard before.

“Romeo,” the other man responded with a smile that was more a baring of teeth than an expression of friendliness and welcome.  “How fortunate cousin, I had no notion you were in port.”

“A brief stop for trade and supplies, cousin.”  Romeo’s words were neutral but Kiro felt the back of his neck prickle.

“Is this pretty yours then?”  The question made Kiro growl low in his throat.

“He’s my shipmate.”

“Only shipmate?”  The insinuation made Kiro bristle.  Romeo shot him a mild look, it didn’t help.  Worse the idle hand was stroking down his hip again.

“You might wish to remove your hand cousin; our Master Pilot dislikes being manhandled.” 

The stroking fingers stilled as his molester stopped and gave him a long second look.  Kiro scowled fiercely up into measuring blue eyes.

“Master Pilot?”  The words were meditative.  “Cousin your ship has a great many skilled pilots, I do wonder if you aren’t growing them in a vat and why you aren’t sharing the program.”

~0~

Romeo’s smile was a bit brittle as Yu finally came up looking ruffled and more than a little bit pissed.  Pity his trick of shoving the tall human down into a lower level alley hadn’t given him a bit more time.

“Xavier.”  Yu’s tone was glacial.

“Yukito.”  Xavier smiled mildly before looking back down into Kiro’s eyes.  “Your little pilot has lovely eyes.”

“Watch out, he’s got a nasty temper too.”  Yu’s warning was more than a touch sarcastic and held an odd undertone that was making his spines just _itch _in curiosity.  The taller pilot crossed his arms over his chest and scowled openly down at him.  That at least was usual.  They never really had gotten along.

Xavier smiled and shook his dark hair, so like Romeo’s out of his eyes.

“Indeed.  I sure nothing a bit of good coffee wouldn’t fix.”  Xavier stroked his hand up Kiro’s hip and started to tuck his fingers down under the waistband of his trousers.

Yu gray eyes sparked rage and only Romeo’s hand on his arm kept him from stepping forward to try and deck the arrogant Nietzschian.  The fact that Romeo had to restrain Yu made Xavier smirk, he so loved the one-ups-man-ship games

He flinched slightly when he looked back down into his little captive’s eyes and saw boiling fury there.  His little armful then spoke in a very calm, and very cold, if soft tone.

“Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me.”  Each word was clear and precisely bitten off to make his meaning quite clear.

Yu shifted again.  Xavier’s eyes flicked back and forth between the small man and the taller human his cousin was restraining.

“I had no notion you were bespoken,” he tried to keep his tone light, teasing, but knew it wasn’t working very well.  He stroked one last time down that sleek hip and casually started to step back.

Xavier never expected the little thing to be so fast.

He was flat on his back with his former target straddling his chest, staring down the fine edge of a flex blade and into a pair of furious blue green eyes.  Eyes he realized with a start that had just slightly oval pupils rather than round ones.  Xavier froze, his game had some unforeseen consequences, and he had no doubt that Romeo would sit back and let him reap the mess he’d just inadvertently sown.

“Only my sesstri get to touch me freely,” warned the small man, not human, clearly not human.  No human would call his ship mates nest kin.  He spread his hands carefully to the sides, trying to look non-threatening.  Well, as non-threatening as a man with nine centimeter arm spines could look.

Romeo highlighted the distinction by gently stroking a hand over the golden hair on top of the smaller man’s head.

“I’d rather not explain to my Aunt how her favored son came to be a bloody spot on the decks Kiro.”

Those eyes blinked and that pretty face turned away, the lean body rising to turn and step gracefully off Xavier’s chest like it was nothing.

“Then he shouldn’t touch me again.”  The matter of fact tone made Romeo smile.

Xavier watched with some envy as Yu was allowed to cuddle the tiny creature close.  He gulped when he saw the flex blade simply tucked away in a sleeve like it was nothing more than a dead steel eating utensil.  He'd never seen any being use flex blades with such casualness.

He gulped again when he saw the tiny thing tip his head back to accept a light peck on the lips from Yu.

Whatever Romeo’s Master Pilot was Yukito Phoenix was one lucky man.

~0~

Strify smiled as Linke and Juri muscled the new synth unit into place.  Jan and Linke had given it a thorough scrub for identifying numbers and Lumi had come up with a set to replace what they’d found and was even now gently teasing apart the machines security to change _all_ its identifying numbers.  By the time he was done this machine would look one hundred percent legitimate.

He so loved his crew.

A flash of white caught his eye and had him turning to look.

Kiro, all in white.  White sim leather trousers hugging slim hips, matching white vest and no shirt, white climbing shoes and gloves contrasting with soft golden skin.

Yu was beside him, in a similar outfit in all black, but Yu had his collar and padlock pendant on as well as the bracer's that held his more interesting lock picking tools.  Strify smiled faintly at the inked glyphs on Yu shoulders, he’d never learned the meanings, Yu was reluctant to talk about the marks.

He smiled when pretty girls had remarked on the phoenix on the right side of his chest but didn’t offer any alternative explanation when they asked if it was a play on his family name.  Yu’s bracer's hid the Roman number thirteen on the inside of his right arm, the trio of glyphs down his right forearm and the odd winged and clawed pyramid on his left, more marks Strify had never heard the stories behind.

Luminor had made a comment once when he’d asked that those marks were part of their past and until Yuki wanted to talk about it, that it was better left alone.

Strify was curious as all hell, but had seen how Jan’s snooping questions had made Yu’s gray eyes go distant.  He’d pulled the crew aside one by one and gotten their agreement to just let that sleeping dragon lie.  That was before he had seen the artwork on the walls of Franky’s shuttle that had glyphs, writing just like the ink on Yu’s shoulders and realized the other companion likely knew what they said.

He was curious as all hell, but he was also a man of his word and he’d promised Luminor he’d let it ride until Yu wanted to talk.

Now he watched as Kiro’s fingertip traced the glyph on Yu’s right shoulder and wondered if Yu was finally going to open up on the subject of his ink.

~0~

“It means ghost.”

Kiro gave him a curious look and traced the lines again before he asked.

“A good spirit or a bad one?”  Kiro’s tone was simply curious, and in spite of memories making tears sting Yu’s eyes he felt compelled to answer.

“It depends.”

Yu stared into Kiro’s eyes for a moment then closed his own and hugged the smaller man close as Kiro wound his slim arms around Yu’s hips and leaned in close. 

He liked the contact, he’d missed it to some degree since Theon, Viv and Jase had split off from him and Lumi in that fucked up gunfight.  They hadn’t been lovers to him like Kiro was turning into but they had been crèche mates, almost brothers while they were growing up.  Like him they had been children of Companion’s and hadn’t had whatever it was that made a companion a Companion so they’d been trained to do other things before being released into the greater universe.

They’d traveled as a small courier group and once Luminor was certified he traveled with them.

Reavers had changed all that.

To this day Yu didn’t know if his heart brothers had escaped or not.  He was half convinced that only the intervention of another companion ship had saved him and Luminor.  And if Franky hadn’t been friends with Luminor he didn’t think the other man would have tried to do anything. 

His stunt of grappling the pod and his shuttle together and dropping them into a singularity was insanity.

Insanity that would have killed them if they hadn’t been spat out almost on top of a freighter run by one Jack Strife.

~0~ _Flashback_ ~0~

Linke swore and jerked the Maru hard to the left when he saw the flash of something falling out of slipstream almost on top of them.  Below and behind him he heard Jan yelp and Strify swear.  As he brought the Maru back around to see what had almost hit them he heard Juri’s voice on the intercom.

“What was that Linke?  I about dropped an oxy cylinder on my foot.”

Linke flipped the com open so everyone could hear him.

“Sorry Juri; had something fall out of slipstream almost on top of us.”  He felt Strify’s hand on his shoulder before he’d finished speaking.  He had to smile, his cousin was incurably curious.

“What was it?”

“Dunno, I’m turning to see.  Mass and velocity should have it… there.”  Linke looked closer.  “How the hell did that thing even get _into_ Slipstream?”

Strify was checking life signs.

“I got three live ones.”

They exchanged a long look before Linke nudged the Maru-ka into position to do a more in depth scan.

Curiosity was a Valentine family trait, no matter what family name they used.

~0~

Jan was all but vibrating in place when they began pumping air back into the main hold.  The shuttle had barely fit it was so big, they’d had to break the smaller pod away from it and put it into a side hold, they’d re-pressurized that hold and Juri was working on convincing the small hatch to open.  Wherever they’d come from their ships were completely different than the ones Juri knew.

The markings on the sides of shuttle and pod had looked vaguely Old Terran, Linke said Chinese.  Nothing that was in common use today, but maybe something from that lot of first exodus people.  He’d heard about some group called the Alliance in news feeds.  Apparently they were big and old like the Commonwealth but were mostly human, very few sentient aliens.

Jan watched the light turn from red to amber and finally to green, then he shoved the hatch open and bolted in to see.

“Got it open.  Got two here, they look human and look like they’ve been in one hell of a fight.”  Juri sounded relieved, but opening a pod to find you were too late to help the occupants was never a pleasant experience.  Live ones brought up their own problems, but at least nasty nightmares weren’t on the agenda for them.

Jan poked around looking for things that would tell him where the hatch controls were.  To his shock as he prodded around a section it slid open and a very pretty man with brown hair and blue eyes wrapped in a robe that would have looked perfectly in place at one of Strify’s Grandmothers parties wobbled out.  Jan barely moved fast enough to keep the stranger from face planting on the deck he was so shocked.

Jan was disgusted; he couldn’t understand a thing the pretty man was saying.  And pretty man was getting worried and kept trying what sounded like different languages.

Two sound sets kept coming up. Luminor and Yukito, names Jan thought.  Whatever he was asking was important enough to him to keep him trying even though it was pretty clear under his pretty clothes that he’d taken one hell of a beating somewhere.  But tumbling through slipstream with no guidance could do that to a body.

Strify came up and helped Jan half carry the pretty man toward the cabin they had turned into a makeshift infirmary.  When they cleared the door Jan heard the half sob from their guest as he saw both the other survivors laid out on bunks.  The look on his face was pure relief.

They barely managed to get him to an empty bunk as whatever strength he’d been using finally ran dry and he went limp between them.

~0~

Predictably it was Linke who figured out how to talk to their guests.  Strify huffed and watched as the taller dark haired one, Luminor, moved carefully around the mess.  He and the other dark haired one were brothers, or claimed to be brothers.  Strify could see hints of resemblance in their faces and more in how their bodies were put together and how they moved.

But it was the older man who had captured his attention.  Strify had never seen someone so graceful, not even the far too pretty girls his brothers and older cousins sometimes took to grandmother’s parties.  The ones his aunts said were no better than they should be; which had confused the crap out of him at the time.

A little cry from down the hall made Strify want to slam his head into the bulkheads in frustration.  He knew Jan and Juri had a thing for each other, but damn it why hadn’t they shut their door before going at it.  The last thing they needed was to come off looking like a bunch of nymphomaniacs in front of three guys who were trying to figure out how to get back home.

A week had given Linke enough time to figure out that their guests were in fact Alliance citizens.  Yu was picking up Basic with a speed that made Strify think the guy has a neural jack and Linke was just jacking in, but the other two were picking things up pretty well too.  Not enough for real conversation, but enough to sort of get by

Jan let out another cry and voiced a demand for ‘more, harder’ that had Strify flushing.

Luminor didn’t look the slightest bit bothered.

“It doesn’t bug you?”  Strify about kicked himself when Luminor looked up at him with those bottomless green eyes.

“Bother?” he asked in heavily accented basic.  Those eyes slid off him and toward the hatch as Jan started his final set of screams, blinked then slid back with an expression of mild curiosity in them.

Strify hadn’t seen that mild mask crack now that all three men were on the mend.  He’d only seen a brief flicker of something when he’d first awakened and hadn’t seen Yu there.  It hadn’t lasted long enough for Strify to identify the emotion.

It was driving him crazy.

“Jan and Juri fucking,” Strify kept it simple, to try and make his meaning clear.

The soft smile that graced Luminor’s face had Strify wishing he could see more.

“Not, fucking.  Loving.  Much love think I they have, yes?”

The grammar was all fucked up, but the meaning behind the words was pretty clear.  Luminor didn’t think they were fucking, he thought they were making love.  Strify blinked and swallowed hard.

He didn’t believe in love.

Strify got up and walked out, mumbling an excuse about relieving Linke on watch and left a confused Luminor staring after him.

~0~

They learned fairly fast that all three of their guests could pilot in normal space.  So in interests of having more pilots to share watch shifts with Strify and Linke taught them the basics of Slipstream.

Piloting lessons went a long way to filling in language gaps.  And Strify learned that Luminor was more than just an astonishingly pretty face.  He had a clever mind, and a sense of humor that could be just as dirty as Jan’s and twice as dry as Linke’s.

He was also an incurable romantic.

It was something of a shock to learn that as well as being terrible romantics Luminor and Franky both had a hard practical side.  Strify had been fretting about paying docking fees from a minuscule shipping fee and having money for food and fuel left over when Luminor had come in and dropped a small sack on the table and kept going.

Strify had yelped when he saw what was in the sack.  Local coinage, Commonwealth ‘pay to bearer’ credit vouchers, cut gemstones and bits of jewelry.  More than enough cash to pay their keep and feed everyone for the next few weeks, and Strify had no idea how the man had gotten it.

He’d scrambled after the tall man, cornered him in the cabin he shared with his brother and demanded an explanation. The mild look of astonishment on Luminor’s face and the soft explanation of what he and Franky did for a living had him spluttering in shock.

“You’re a **_whore_**?” 

Worse than the calm explanation of where the money came from was the _look_ Luminor gave him at his outburst.  Strify had felt like sinking through the decking at the soft and careful explanation of what exactly a Companion was.  Luminor had needed words several times, words Strify’s numb brain was more than happy to supply.

Companions were more than just whores; they were well versed in several arts, music, fencing, piloting, medicine and cooking as well as the sexual arts.  Most were better educated than his cousins with multiple university degrees; they had to be graceful, articulate and charming.  In the Alliance they had extraordinarily high standing.

Calling them whores was like calling a Vertruvial ice drake a little garden lizard.

He’d nodded an understanding he didn’t feel and wandered back to the table in the mess to stare at his paperwork in shock.  Just in time for Franky to wander in with his contribution to the upkeep of the Maru-ka.

Two men in less than ten hours had come up with over one hundred thousand thrones worth of goods and cash.

Explaining it to Linke, Jan and Juri had been tricky when he wasn’t sure he understood himself.

Jan about got him killed.

“So,” Jan said around a mouthful of food. “What you’re saying is we picked up a pair of high class whores.”

He hadn’t been able to say anything to refute it; he just didn’t have the time or the words.

Yu had heard them and had punched Strify in indignation.

His brother wasn’t a whore.

Strify had talked fast, trying to keep a very angry and, now he realized, scarily well trained young man from feeding him his balls over the implied insult.  He didn’t even understand why Yu was punching _him_ and not Jan.

It took another three runs for things to settle.

More critically it had taken Strify getting jealous.

~0~

They had been on Sarashan Drift for a week, dealing with a quarantine issue.  The Maru had a full load of critical medicine, vaccines mostly, for an outbreak on Tella 6.  But they and several other freighters loaded similarly were stuck on the Drift until ‘authorized’ personnel came to pick up the drugs.

On the good side, docking fees were waived as were minimal room and board for the crews.  On the bad side they didn’t have much to do.

Jan had made a beeline for a casino and was doing well on a local game that hinged heavily on knowledge of chemistry and math.  Jan was a not so closeted chemistry geek and was giving local experts a good run.  With Juri there to act as protection Jan was bringing in a healthy lot of thrones every day, most of which went right back out to keep the rest of the crew amused.

Linke had found a library and only Franky could drag him out for mealtimes, something Strify found increasingly amusing. 

Strify had been amusing himself by designing clothing to make on their synth machine.  It was an old hunk of junk but Linke and Jan kept it running and it gave them a bit of creative freedom in terms of dress, at least until it went down again or they ran out of raw materials.  And with all the money Jan kept bringing in raw materials weren’t the issue this time around.  And Linke was a genius at keeping the coding up on the dratted thing.

He’d been toying with some ideas that would have looked terrible on him, but would have suited Luminor’s longer frame very nicely when he realized he’d seen Franky but not Luminor or Yu.  Worse he hadn’t seen them in several days.

Curiosity got him up and out hunting for his missing crew.

Yu he’d found relatively quickly, in the pleasure quarter.  He’d looked rather intimidating with all the little bits of metal sticking out of his face, all three lip piercings, the loop in his eyebrow, the loops in his ears and a tiny ruby stud in his nose.  All that over a lean body covered in painted on tight black sim leather, Yu looked intimidating and apparently more than a bit exotic to the local girls, Strify had to stifle a snicker over the bad boy attraction gimmick working so well.  Yu had streaked red into his hair and was flirting with a local girl by catching his tongue piercing in his teeth as he listened to her talking.

Strify had felt stirrings of interest in his own body when the girl traced slender fingers over the chains hanging from Yu’s belt and up to hook one fingertip in a chain around his neck to tug him down; Strify expected the girl to kiss Yu and was a bit disappointed when she didn’t.  Instead she seemed to be trying to convince him of something.  Whatever it was she hadn’t managed when an older matron came up and hustled her off chattering indignantly in a language Strify didn’t know.

He expected Yu to wander off, but he didn’t.  Yu just settled back in a waiting posture in the archway he’d been in before and scanned the crowds.  It was odd enough that Strify circled around until he was on the same side of the street as Yu, near the ivy swaged courtyard that Yu’s archway led into. 

Then he heard it, Luminor’s voice singing in the language he heard Yu, Luminor and Franky using when they were alone.  The light sounds of a piano accompanied the singer.

Curiosity had him shifting his hair to a uniform dark brown even as his hands and feet found holds to climb the stone wall hidden under all the ivy.  It took him back to his childhood, when his parents were still alive when he’d try and sneak over the garden walls to watch the parties.  His skills hadn’t gotten to rusty at least and he was atop the wall and looking down in less than a minute.

Strify made sure he wasn’t easily visible from the street and looked down into the courtyard.  Luminor was there, as was a man he didn’t recognize, Luminor was seated at a piano, singing and accompanying himself with delicate sounding music.  Strify mouth went dry.  He’d never seen that shirt before; almost see through in a dark violet, nor had he ever seen the soft velvet trousers that hugged Luminor’s slim hips.

His hands itched to touch like that man’s were doing, to be the one lifting a bit of long black hair away from a slender neck, to stroke down that lean back and linger on a sharp hipbone.

Then his eyes sharpened.  Luminor had a port now, he’s seen the other man’s neck less than a week ago, he hadn’t had a net installed then.  To get one in and be healing so soon, Strify’s eyes lingered on the redness around the port.  That required serious nanobot tech for the healing process.  Expensive tech.

His eyes narrowed as he watched the other man place a line of kisses down Luminor’s throat, watched as Luminor’s hands stilled and his head went back.  His teeth ground together as he watched the other man take Luminor, his Luminor and lay him in a pile of soft cushions, strip that shirt off him and start touching that soft pale skin.  Kissing that skin that his hands didn’t belong anywhere near, making those green eyes close in pleasure, pleasure that wasn’t his to give.

A yell from above had Strify reacting like any young male child caught where he didn’t belong, he yelped looked up and then was sliding down the outside of the wall and running like hell away.  The locals were taller than him; he might be able to pass as an adolescent, if he could get out of sight quickly enough.

A few blocks later the hue and cry was going up, but Strify had the blond back in his hair, was wearing a different shirt and was trying on a long, sleeveless vest and generally making a nuisance of himself to the shopkeeper.  When the guards came by looking for a child they passed him by without a second glance.

After the guards passed by he bought the vest and with its hems swirling around his ankles went stalking back to the Maru-ka.

~0~ _End Flashback_ ~0~

Strify looked away from Yu and Kiro and back up into the eyes of his lover.  Lumi had his head tipped to one side in curiosity as his eyes flicked between where Kiro was smiling up at Yu and where Strify was standing.

“Sorry love, lost in thought.”

“The past is the past.” Luminor said with his usual solemnity but with a spark behind his eyes that made the green glow warmly.

“Mmm,” Strify agreed.  “I was thinking about how we met and when I decided you were mine.”

One elegant eyebrow arched up, but Lumi’s tone was dry.

“_Really_.  You never did explain when precisely that was.”

“Sarashan Drift.  That first year.  I saw you with a client.”

Luminor’s face only betrayed curiosity.

“And?”

Strify backed Luminor into the bulkhead before he answered, whispering in the taller man’s ear.

“And it got me so horny I came back to the ship and masturbated until I thought my dick was going to fall off.  It didn’t go away, I wanted you more.  So I followed you again, watched you flirting with little girls who didn’t have the brains to hold Jan’s wrenches never mind your attention.  I watched you reading to that old Nietzschian matron, watched you suck off her grandson.  Hell, I watched her grandson fuck you and hated him.”

Luminor blinked and looked down into Strify’s eyes, his eyes were dilating in interest.

“Hated him?  All he did was pay for a bit of my time.”  Luminor’s voice was a bit breathless, but some of that could have been how tightly Strify was pressed into him and what Strify’s hands were doing around the waistband of his trousers.

“I wanted your time. I wanted to be the one you touched, the one who could make you moan like that.”

Strify didn’t notice that the rest of his crew had noted how he was leaning into and touching Luminor and had quietly all shifted space and left them alone in the front hold.

“Want to be the one you beg, the one you touch.”

Luminor stroked his fingers over Strify’s cheek and leaned down the little bit to seal their mouths together.  Strify groaned into the kiss and let his roving fingers slid up under Lumi’s shirt, pushing it up so he could lean down and leave little bite marks over that soft pale skin.  He fought for a moment with the ties to Lumi’s trousers before getting them loose enough to slide the soft fabric down over his lover’s hips.

~0~

When Strify got like this is was easier to just go with his whim, Luminor leaned his head back into the cold metal of the bulkhead and moaned.  He shifted a little to brace a bit better and let out a soft cry of pleasure at the feel of the hard ring in Strify’s lip on his hardness.  The feel of Strify’s pointed tongue trying to work down inside his cock had him gasping.

It didn’t take much before his knees were trembling so much it was impossible to remain standing.  Luminor slid down the bulkhead to the deck and hung on as Strify moved with him, not letting go of him.  Those calloused hands, pilot hands stroked him just so, made him tremble and arch in need, as that mouth made him crazy with want.

This was something his teachers had warned him about.  Fondness for a client was acceptable.  Love was not, he had to beware of love.

Strify had been safe, Strify was a cynic, didn’t believe in love.  Strify wasn’t a client, he was the captain.

But Strify loved him, loved him with a fierceness he’d never anticipated, and in loving him had destroyed all of Luminor’s defenses.

“I love you,” Luminor whispered later, after Strify had made him come what felt like a hundred times but in reality had probably been only four or five times.  After Strify had mauled him on the bare deck of his ship, he’d gathered Luminor up and moved him to his cabin and loved him so gently in the soft bedding of the captain’s bed.

Luminor smiled faintly at the sight of his captain, his friend and his lover, his beloved contradiction sleeping.  Strify had buried his face in Luminor’s neck, the side opposite his neural jack and was snoring softly.

Asleep Strify looked so young, so innocent, nothing like he was awake.

He wondered if his family realized what they were throwing away when they’d done whatever it was that had finally provoked him into running away.

Luminor knew Strify wasn’t just a common freighter captain.  His manners, when he chose to use them, were impeccable, instinctive, his bearing _screaming_ high class breeding.  Breeding that took generations of money and standing to grind itself into the very pores of its children.  He was well educated, as well as he, Franky and Yu were, if in a different system.  He knew music, art and poetry, _wrote_ poetry, and he sang with a creditable voice even if it was just in the showers.  He had neat and elegant handwriting, impeccable if eclectic and occasionally eccentric taste in clothing and an eye for all things beautiful.

In short if they’d been in the Alliance he would have been exactly the sort of younger son junior Companions talked about, someone who would be amusing and pleasurable to companion with on a long term contract.

This wasn’t the Alliance.

Luminor rested his cheek on Strify’s head and sighed.

He wondered how long he would have before his illness was to advanced to hide any longer.

~0~

Romeo stared up at the ceiling of his cabin and wondered where he would be if he hadn’t listened to David all those years ago.  Idly his eyes flicked over to the empty bunk to his right, away from the door.  David was keeping Timo company on his shift on watch.  He wondered at why his baby half brother bothered, why he _liked_ being near the taciturn Tiger.  David was such a social butterfly not the sort to have a grump as his best friend. But somehow they were. Some thought they might even be lovers, Romeo hadn’t seen any signs yet.

He wasn’t sure what he would do if he did.

Timo was intelligent, strong and very determined.  He’d also gravitated toward David right off when he and his shipmates had been tossed into the general slave pen.  Romeo remembered his reaction to another Nietzschian near his brother.

Ugly was putting it mildly.  Only David’s words had kept a fight from breaking out right then. 

Only David’s words and actions, gravitating toward the short Tiger and his three very pretty friends had put him in a position to help Luminor break the locks so they could escape.  Many of the slaves in that pen had been recaptured fairly quickly.  But with the skills the two fragile looking ones had and David’s hunches they’d managed to stay free.

Romeo had expected that as soon as their ship was far enough away they’d at best be set on a Drift somewhere to find their own way.  He hadn’t counted on Strify being infuriatingly human.  He hadn’t expected that a brief instant, a lapse of his better judgment that had him going back for the man with bi-colored hair would result in a safe place for his brother and a permanent berth for them both. 

It had though, and it made no sense, but at the same time it made perfect sense.  They never would have escaped alone, Strify’s crew wouldn’t have escaped alone either.  Together they were stronger, more able to survive.

He rolled over and buried his face in his pillow.  He needed to sleep.  Timo would watch over the ship and David and all would be well.  He would rest and be on top form for when they landed in Rashava Station.  He would need to be.

It was Kodiak territory.

He wondered if his father would be there.

~0~

Kiro felt rather relieved that David had been able to find and remove all his tracking and control chips.  This station was _crawling_ with Nietzschian’s.  Prides he knew on sight like Tiger, Jaguar and Kodiak.  Lots and lots of Kodiak, it was a Kodiak enclave.  Prides he had no idea of who were, and thus were all the more dangerous.

There were fountains and statuary everywhere.  Kiro paused and looked up into the carved face of a man who had been dead for millennia standing behind a shorter younger carved face.

“The Progenitors.  You have an eye for art little one.”  Kiro looked up at a tall Nietzschian who had most of his attention on the statues.  “The taller one is Drago Museveni, the great Progenitor. The shorter is Tamerlane Anasazi.”  Blue gray eyes locked to his.

“Your re-born progenitor,” Kiro offered, hoping to avoid a fight.  The tall man smiled and it was an interesting smile that lit his eyes before it touched his lips.

“You know some of our history then.”

Kiro looked away; this man was giving him the chills.  He smelled too much like Romeo, had faint hints of the same bloodlines even though he was fair, muscular and tall rather than dark, blocky and shortish.  Kiro let his eyes linger on the wisps of fine blond hair that escaped from under the taller man’s black headscarf.

“It’s never a bad thing to know a little about the peoples you trade with, it saves misunderstandings.”  This stranger laughed like Romeo did, his eyes crinkled up at the corners almost exactly the same way.  It bothered him.

“Very true.” Kiro felt those eyes on him weighing, it made him uncomfortable so he turned and met that blue gray stare head on.  After a long moment the taller man offered his hand.

“Samuel Anasazi, by Tyr out of Cleandori.”

Kiro warily clasped hands in the proper Nietzschian manner.

“Kiro Cullen sesstri ne ma Das Maru-ka, estssi na.”  Kiro watched as the tall mans eyebrows shot upwards.

“You have a Romeo Di’Valentina Nightingale on your ship?”

“I have a man with that name among my sesstri.” Kiro answered warily as he tried not to yank his wrist away from where Samuel’s hand was tightening on it.  Those sharp blue gray eyes were now boring into him.

“Is there a David among your kinsmen?”

Kiro hesitated then gaped up as the taller man let go of his wrist to grasp both his shoulders firmly.  There was something behind his blue eyes, a fear and longing, something completely confusing to Kiro.

“Please, did he find Davii?”

Kiro blinked in shock at the pet name, one that as far as he had known was only used on the Maru.  He nodded mutely, his mind spinning.  Kiro yelped as the hands on his shoulders moved and a pair of strong arms hugged him tightly as that voice breathed into this hair.

“Thanks the Progenitors.”

Kiro felt like he was missing rather a lot of critical information.  He knew about Xavier, Romeo’s cousin, and had assumed that word had been passed along that Romeo had been seen and all was well.  Clearly Nietzschian Prides didn’t talk to each other the way Ssulli Clans did.  He blinked several times and stared at the chest millimeters from his nose as the taller man cuddled him like he’d just… well Kiro’s mind couldn’t come up with anything, maybe told him his firstborn had just done something amazing.

“You, ah, might not wanna do that.”

Kiro let out a low growl as Samuel reacted to Yu’s voice by turning and shoving him behind him.

“I don’t believe I know you,” Samuel’s voice was wary and Kiro felt like rolling his eyes.  Yu was the last person he needed protection from.

Yu stood a few meters away, his arms relaxed at his sides warily watching.

“Yukito Phoenix, pilot and engineer of the freighter Maru-ka.”

Kiro wanted to laugh.  Samuel immediately deflated, and was scrubbing one hand over the back of his neck sheepishly as he realized he was standing between two ship mates.

“Ah, apologies.”

“Unhun… you okay there Kiro?”  Yu’s stance didn’t shift, nor did his eyes waver.  Kiro sighed and stepped around the taller Nietzschian and snuggled into Yu’s side.

“He was asking after Rom and David.”

Yu’s eyes flicked down to his face then back up to the taller man’s as his arm curled protectively around Kiro’s back.

“Right.  Why?”

“I miss my brothers.”

Yu eyes narrowed and flicked up and down Samuel’s tall frame.

“Right.”  Clearly Yu didn’t believe a word of it.  “We’ll pass the message.  C'mon Kiro, Cap’n wants us back home for dinner.”

Kiro laced his fingers with Yu’s longer ones as they walked away, back toward the ship, leaving the blond Nietzschian standing by the statues of the Progenitors.

~0~

Romeo looked startled when Kiro told him he had kin worried about him.  Yu had been all for not mentioning it, but Kiro had asked almost the instant he’d seen the Nietzschian over the dinner table.  David’s face had lit up and he’d been all for tracking down the other Niet as soon as the meal was complete.  Strify had tipped his head to one side and leveled an unreadable look at Romeo, one that had him ducking his head.

“We all know about Xavier and a few of your other _delightful_ cousins.” The emphasis Strify put of the words delightful made Romeo flinch minutely.  “What about the rest of the family? Hmmm?”

Romeo groaned as David cheerfully spilled the beans.

~0~

Yu felt very strange all dressed up at the gate to the main Kodiak portion of the station.  He hated diplomacy, Nietzschian diplomacy was even worse.  But Strify was insistent, so they’d all dressed up pretty and turned up at the gate after a very young Nietzschian had turned up at the Maru-ka’s airlock with an invitation.

Gods help them, an invitation to a semi formal dinner.

He didn’t have any idea what a formal dinner was like with Nietzschian’s, humans yes, but that was Alliance humans, and core worlds.  This place was _completely_ different.

Luminor and Franky at least could fake it with practiced grace; all the gods help the rest of them.

Romeo looked amazingly calm; David was bouncing in place and chattering at a resigned looking Timo.  Kiro just looked curious, as did Jan.  Juri and Linke were doing their stone faced bookends trick.

Strify looked shockingly in his element as they were escorted in, he had that odd mix of graciousness and arrogance that amused their hosts without being offensive.

The meal was excellent, but Yu couldn’t really relax enough to enjoy it.  He half hoped they could kite out as soon as they were done but Strify was being charming.  That meant they had to circulate.

Linke and Juri had found tech types to quietly converse with, Jan was chattering away with an astonishingly pretty woman and Kiro was just watching with curious eyes.

Yu blinked when he saw the blond Nietzschian from earlier hug David tightly, burying his nose in the fine black silk on David’s head.  David hugged him back with every evidence of affection.

That was when the trouble started.

One of the older Niets frowned at the way Samuel hugged David and then Romeo.

Yu scanned the room for the others as the old man stood and snarled something he didn’t understand.  Something that had Strify groaning and tugging Luminor out of the free fire zone.

Romeo bristled, as did Samuel and several other younger members of the crowd.

The old man snarled something else and backhanded Rom in the face.  Rom turned his head back with a snap and spoke very softly, the only words of the whole exchange that Yu understood.

“The first hit is free.”

Then all hell broke loose.

Yu wasn’t sure who threw the next punch, but he did see the old bastard go down in a limp heap.  After that he was too busy trying to stay out of the way.  He clipped a few people on the head so they’d go down and stay down without killing them as he tried to get over to where Strify, Lumi and Franky were watching by a taller Nietzschian who appeared amused by the proceedings.

He noticed that Samuel had both arms wrapped tightly around Kiro’s chest as he struggled to keep the small Ssulli out of the fight.  The only things that were helping him were the fact he was bigger than Kiro and had had the good sense to keep his arms out of reach of Kiro’s teeth.  But even that might not help him keep his hissing and spiting armful out of the fray.

Yu ducked a thrown bottle and scooted that way.  He saw Juri and Linke duck their way over to Jan and help the smaller man get over to the pocket of stillness beside Strify and that strange Nietzschian.  He knew he’d been introduced but was _hanged_ if he could remember the man’s _name_.

He found David first, sensibly hiding under a table, and helped the Callistan to his feet and herded him toward safety, relative though it was.  Once there Yu looked around for Romeo and Kiro.

Kiro he found fairly fast, Samuel had given up trying to move Kiro and had him pinned tightly between his body and one of the large columns holding up the roof.  He had both of Kiro’s wrists in one hand and the other locked on Kiro’s jaw keeping Kiro from biting him.  Samuel appeared to be trying to explain something, but Kiro really didn’t seem to care much for the explanations and was squirming and struggling in ways that clearly were hitting some buried kink in the taller man from the way he kept having to pause and breathe before trying again to talk Kiro down.

Romeo it took longer to find, but then Yu looked to where the fighting was the fiercest.  There in the center was a very angry Romeo.

Yu made a mental note to do his best not to piss the shorter man off.

“**Enough**!”

The shout made everyone jump. Only a few of the men at the center of the fight didn’t stop until the big man waded in and knocked a few heads himself.

“Enough,” he repeated, glaring a few stragglers into submission.  “Who am I?” He demanded.

“Tyr Anasazi, father, patriarch of the Pride Kodiak,” called Samuel’s voice.  Yu grinned at the softer comment “Please don’t bite me Kiro.” Then Samuel’s voice was ringing clear again.  “Great grandson of the Progenitor reborn, Father of the line Anasazi.”  Yu heard a small gasp from the blond and had to grin; Kiro had wedged his knee up so his foot was braced against the column.  He’d wedged it up between Samuels’s legs and now there wasn’t a damn thing the taller man could do if Kiro decided to knee him hard in the groin.  From the toothy grin Kiro was giving the bigger man he knew it and knew Samuel had the choice, let him go now or get kneed and bitten and let him go later and probably die for it.

Tyr nodded, staring out over his people.

“My son has proven his worth to the Pride, who disputes it?”

“He has no children,” protested one of the older males who had wisely stayed out of the fight.

“I have no wives.” Romeo clarified coldly.  “I have children.”

Yu felt his eyebrows go up.  That was news to him.

Romeo straightened and wiped a bit of blood from his split lip off on the back of one hand.  He glared out into the room.

“I have children,” he repeated.  “Begotten on women of the Prides Skunk and Ocelot and Wyvern.  Begotten on women of Prides Terrlista and Owl and Jaguar.”  Romeo glared over the crowd.  “I have children.  I have spread my genes, the genes of the Progenitor as is my duty and my right.”

“You’re a half blood,” shouted the man who had protested about children.  Yu could tell nothing would make the old bastard happy.

“I am Nietzschian.  You are a fool.  Callistan blood brings many advantages that will help my children survive.”

There was a rumbling, but that it seemed was that.  Yu blinked and edged over toward Kiro.  Smiling nervously at the amused expression on the Matriarchs face as he edged past her.  Women like that were just damn scary, and he was man enough to admit it.

“I would like to put you down now. Please don’t bite me.”

Kiro just grinned and let out a low hiss that clearly wasn’t reassuring at all to the poor idiot who had tried to restrain him, apparently for his own good.  Samuel slid the hand that had been holding Kiro’s face so he couldn’t turn and bite down to Kiro’s hip.  Then he carefully let go of Kiro’s wrists and moved that hand down as well.  Now only his body weight and his hands on Kiro’s hips were holding the small Ssulli up off the ground.

“Sammy you are one brave man.”  Romeo sounded tired as he walked up to where Samuel was trying to get out of his situation.

“I think stupid but lucky is a better appellation Rom.  I didn’t realize your little friend was Ssulli.”  Samuel let out a little squeak as Kiro’s knee shifted upwards.  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t knee me in the balls either.”  Yu had to admire than man’s gumption to try and talk Kiro out of maiming him.

“Let him be Kiro, Sammy’s okay.”

Kiro blinked and shifted his level stare over from where he had been glaring up at Samuel.

“You look like shit.”  Yu snickered.  Kiro was clearly still peeved and would be letting the rest of them know about it for some time.  Kiro looked back up to where Samuel was watching him warily.  “Put me down please.”

Samuel let out a tiny sigh of relief as the knee slid down and away from his balls.

“My pleasure.” He eased back and gently let Kiro slide down the column until his boots were safely on the floor.  Yu waited, there was no way Kiro was going to just let the man who’d manhandled him get by like that.

“I want an explanation as to what the fuck just happened,” his hand snapped out and caught Samuel by the front belt loop of his trousers.  “And you get to help.”

Yu broke up laughing.  Samuel had yelped and looked like he really would rather space walk without a suit than be anywhere in range of Kiro’s temper.

He wanted an explanation as well, but it could wait until Rom’s lip quit bleeding.

~0~

Several hours later Kiro had finally run out of questions.  One of Romeo’s more distant cousins had come searching for his lover and found Samuel acting as a reluctant seat for a meditative Kiro.  The look on the younger Nietzschian’s face had been a picture; apparently Julian was used to Sammy being a bit more dominant than that.

Julian had been mentioned in passing as an example of what a Nietzschian without superior physical characteristics could be.  Julian was a theoretical physicist who was tinkering with ship propulsion.  He was tall, very thin and other than the arm spines looked more like a teenage computer or science geek than a formidable Nietzschian.

They’d learned that Samuel was an artist, musician and held several degrees in mathematics and engineering.  He and Julian had met during a research project on improving slipstream drive efficiency.  Julian had focused on the physics side, Samuel the engineering side.  Romeo had been along for the ride as a pilot.

Apparently David had been kidnapped while Julian and Samuel were still in the ‘scream insults at each other’ phase of their relationship.  But both had set aside their differences and helped Romeo get a small ship to go searching for his baby half brother.

It left Yu with even more respect for the blocky Nietzschian.  It had taken him two years of searching to catch up to his brother.  And he’d had to be captured and thrown into the pits on Morglu to finally touch his brother again.

Yu knew most of the story from there.  Strify had told Lumi about how they’d gone to Morglu for a job and barely escaped.  Yu had a short list of people to _never_ accept jobs from and a set of sample offers so he knew what to be wary of.

He’d been an independent trader enough in the Alliance to know a shady deal from a bad one.  Yu’s eyes closed briefly in memory.  Theon had been their negotiator, Jason the cargo master, Vivian their master pilot; he’d been the engineer and a secondary pilot.

Yu sent up a small mental prayer that somehow, some way they had been able to escape the Reavers.

Kiro noticed his pensive unhappiness and let Samuel up to crawl into Yu’s lap and cuddle him.  Yu wrapped his arms around Kiro and buried his face in Kiro’s hair.

Romeo had re-found his family, reconnected with brothers and men whom he loved like brothers.  Yu wondered if he would ever be able to do that again with any of his kin other than Luminor.

~0~

Strify blinked in confusion.

“He wants to what?”

Romeo looked up from where he’d been idly poking at his slisltre stalks.  The rest of the crew was staring at Romeo with varying expressions of shock.

“He wants to give me a ship.”

“You have a ship.” Strify didn’t understand; the Maru-ka was Romeo’s as much as she was anyone’s.

Romeo poked at his vegetables again.  Strify couldn’t remember a time when he’d seen the Nietzschian so uncomfortable.

“He’s offering a Delta class Firefly.”

“Didn’t the Epsilons just come out?” Yu asked curiously, Strify stifled a groan, that wasn’t the point of this conversation he could pilot geek later.

“Yeah, Sammy and Juke are playing with modifications to the engines.” Strify sighed, that was nice and all but…

“Why now?  We’re just getting comfortable now.”

“We’re getting more offers than we can work now Jack.  Another ship would help build our reputation.”

Strify pulled a face.  He knew that, he needed something else.

“But a Firefly?  Those aren’t exactly freighters.” Which wasn’t exactly true, they were more a hybrid freighter than the true hauler the Maru-ka was.

“No,” agreed Romeo, “they aren’t, but they are a bit faster and more versatile on what fuels they can run.”

Strify grimaced; fuel type had bitten them on the butt several times in the past.  Thank all the gods Jan was a chemistry geek and had a refining still hidden in one of the back cargo bays.

“I don’t like splitting us up.”

“I’m not enthralled with it either, but we are rather crowed together right now, and an Eclipse class freighter would eat us alive if we had another run of small jobs.”

Strify grimaced again, but reluctantly nodded.  Just the maintenance costs for an Eclipse would have eaten them alive if they got stuck for work like they had been back when he’d first taken the Maru-ka.  They’d have had a choice sell out or starve.  And even after selling out they’d still probably have starved.

“I don’t like it. But I can see the sense.  No matter what we need to keep in touch.”

And that was that.

~0~

It took the weeks of refitting the Firefly to sort out who was going with which ship.  Yu knew when he saw Franky painting the name on the rechristened ship’s hull where he was going, but with Linke going with Romeo it was rather a foregone conclusion.

Franky had fallen in love just as surely as his brother had.

Yu turned away from where Franky was carefully dabbing paint and blinked away the tears in his eyes.  He missed the rest of his family and missed his old ship.

The feel of slim strong arms winding around his middle made him pause.  Yu half turned and took Kiro into his arms.  Pretty blue green eyes looked up at him in concern and Yu found himself smiling weakly.

“I’m going to miss them.”

“We’ll see them again soon.  Luminor and Jan and Linke will make sure of it.”

Yu buried his face in Kiro’s hair and knew his own hair was shifting in reaction; the red streaking probably had shifted back up from where it had been around the tips of his limp spikes.  He never could control his hair nano’s like Kiro could, especially when he was around the smaller man.  He scrubbed his face into the soft hair on top of Kiro’s head.

“I know.  It’s not logical.”

Kiro turned his face up and nuzzled under Yu’s jaw in quiet understanding.

“They’re my family now and I don’t like the feeling that I’m losing them.”

“You aren’t.  You’ll see.”

Yu signed and hugged the shorter man tightly.

“My head knows your right, my heart is still going to yell and fuss for a while.”

“Mmm,” agreed Kiro.  “How about we take advantage of the time and I give your body something else to think about?”

Yu felt his breath catch and leaned down to capture Kiro’s lips in a non-verbal but still enthusiastic affirmative.

~0~

One disadvantage of being separate crews Romeo realized was that now Luminor’s health was highlighted to him.  The slender Companion was visibly thinner and frailer than the last time they’d met up.  For the first year and a half they’d met up every few weeks, and then gradually begun parting ways for sometimes a few months at a time.

Now seeing how frail Luminor was Romeo vowed to bring the two ships closer together.

He’d known when Luminor could no longer hide his illness.  Strify had called him and asked formally if Linke and Jan could help search for a treatment.

Romeo would never refuse his brother, even with Strify not being Nietzschian.  He would not leave his family alone in their time of need.

He was taking leave here for a week, and letting their crews mingle together again as Jan, Linke and David worked on a new, or rather an old but very effective treatment for Luminor.  He expected to pick up another job here on Daniel’s World, a misnomer, it was just a very large Drift, but was going to take care of family as best he could first.

The airlock cycled and Romeo formally gave command over to Juri for his watch and headed down to where Jan and Franky waited.  Linke looked bored, but that was misleading and Timo was all but a statue.  Romeo expected he’d be back glued to David’s side as soon as he saw his baby brother.  Romeo still wasn’t sure what David saw in the Tiger, but their odd friendship seemed to work, so he wasn’t going to argue.  But if hearts got involved he was going to have a nice long chat with the other Nietzschian about their fragility and his continued lifespan hinging on being careful of one in particular.

Romeo reached out and un-dogged the hatch and let it swing open.

“The Maru-ka is four slips down from us.” Jan offered helpfully.

Romeo sighed, but gave his usual lecture on not getting into to much trouble before he let them loose.  It always felt a little flat after years of listening to Strify warn them he wouldn’t be bailing them out if they got locked up and the colorful list of punishments for getting caught doing various things without inviting the captain along first.

Predictably they moved almost as a group four berths over and knocked on the door to the Maru-ka.

It had taken all of Romeo’s will to not swear out loud at the wraith Luminor had become.

In spite of his clear ill health Luminor was his usual picture of grace and hospitality.  Jan and Linke closeted themselves off with David and Timo in the Maru-ka’s closet of an infirmary.  Strify managed a wan smile as Franky and Luminor settled into the graceful and calming patterns of their joint version of a tea ceremony.

“We’ll be short hopping from here to Callista,” Romeo offered softly.

“We’re picking up a cargo to Dromery’s.” Romeo closed his eyes, a short hop, but in the opposite direction.  He’d see what he could find that stayed close.

He set his worry aside and set about enjoying what time he had in port with his brothers.

~0~

Kiro laughed as Jan danced in place.  The short tech had swept a table game again and had just more than quadrupled his winnings.  Jan grinned as he collected his credit chips and grabbed Kiro’s wrist.

“Let’s go see if that crepes place is still around.”

Kiro laughed and willingly got towed along.  David had warned them after Jan had won four times to move on.  Kiro hadn’t been sure if Jan would listen to the implied warning, but apparently last time he hadn’t and it having taken Juri, Linke and Romeo to get him out of the fight had made an impression.  If nothing else the dozen staples in Juri’s head would have made an impression.  And it looked like a more positive one than the bottle had on Juri’s head.  The others who had lost were grumbling but not so much that Kiro had concerns about getting jumped later by sore losers.

The food stall was long gone, but they ran into some people they knew; Jussi and Jyrki from the ship Vampires Dance.  Kiro laughed himself silly watching the pair drink until Yu, Linke and Juri caught up to them.  Then he laughed himself half sick as Jan challenged Jussi to a contest on who could get their partner worked up the fastest.

Yu had grinned and pulled Kiro into his lap when he saw Jan and Jussi crawling into their taller shipmate’s laps to start the game.

There had been a large number of catcalls when each of the smaller men began kissing his lover, but eventually the bar mood shifted from celebratory to full on horny.  A bit over two hours later the group dragged themselves out of the orgy and staggered back to their ships.

Yu carried Kiro back to his bunk and continued what he started in a far more private setting.

~0~

Yu groaned and tried to bury his head under his pillow, but Strify yanked that bit of protection away and stared down at him with an amused smirk on his face.

“Kindly tell me Yuki, why the Captain and Master Pilot of Vampires Dance sent over this?”  Strify held up something small that looked like a data chip.

Yu groaned and squinted up at Strify.

“Dunno, what’s on it?”

Strify tossed him the chip.

“Apparently the video from the party you lot started at Brecca’s last night.”  Strify sounded terribly amused.

Yu groaned; the bar they’d been in was called Brecca’s.  He’d forgotten Jyrki had a thing for filming any antics he and Jussi got up to.

“Joy, I’m part of his porn collection.”

“Part of whose porn collection?” Asked Kiro sounding like he desperately needed coffee.

“Jyrki’s.”  Kiro groaned.

“I told Jan not to fuck around anywhere near that old pervert.”

“Didn’t stop you from kissing me.” Yu sat up and rubbed at his eyes.

“Fucker,” Kiro growled as he crawled over to the edge of the bunk and slid out.

“Or that.” Yu noted as he watched Kiro’s pert little bottom walking out and heading toward the mess.

Strify just looked terribly amused as he walked back out.

“I hope you got the old pirate to agree to royalties.” Strify teased down the corridor.

Yu flopped back into his bunk with a low moan.

~0~

“If we don’t meet up sooner we’ll reconnect in three months at Helsinki Drift.” Romeo said softly as he hugged Strify goodbye.

“Agreed.  Three months or sooner.  Fly safe.”

“Fly safe.” Romeo echoed then watched as Strify stepped back and cycled the hatch closed.

Three months.  He’d see what else he could find in three months that might help Luminor’s condition.

~0~

Shin felt the deck under his feet shudder and buck like an angry horse, he yelped and landed hard on his hands and knees and just hung on until the first wave of shudders stopped.  Then he was on his feet and sprinting for the command deck as fast as his long legs would take him.  His grandfathers would be on the command deck; Rommie seemed to know what he was trying to do and opened doors for him.

Another violent shudder sent him skidding on elbows and knees across the floor as he cleared the last set of doors and he slammed hard into the console his uncle Bam was manning.  The solid Nietzschian grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him back to his feet, hissing something in his ear that made his knees come unstrung again as hidden doors in his mind sprang open.

He could hear screaming, shouting, smell burning wiring and plastic, but felt strangely detached from it all. Shin looked around, trying to find his grandfathers.  His heart froze in his chest when he saw both Grandpa Tom and Grandpa Bill lying limp on the decking, Shin scrambled over and felt sick when Grandpa Bill’s head lolled limply.

“Shin-yavi,” Grandpa Tom’s voice was barely audible over the chaos but Shin knelt there and pressed his cheek down by the old man’s lips.   
”Order, evacuation, Rommie, _Andromeda_ Authorize!” The code of letters and numbers that followed made his head spin.  Hearing Rommie’s voice sounding pained saying, ‘Change authorized.  Implementing changes’ made him feel sick.  But hearing his Uncle Bam scream as his console overloaded and exploded in his face galvanized him into motion even as his grandfather groped for his twin and breathed his last.

His only goal was the com console to get the Captain’s last order out.  Shin’s voice suddenly sounded more mature than his nineteen years, adult, calm and in control as he passed the order for evacuation complete with authorization codes he hadn’t realized he knew until they were coming out of his mouth.

“Rommie, turn us into the spiral, we may be able to sling the pods further out of the Schwarzschild radius.”  All his lessons in space travel and the physics of evacuation around high gravity spatial bodies kicked in, book learning, but still useful now.

“We are far enough out that the port side is fully protected Shin-yavi,” Rommie’s voice was calm, echoing his unnatural state of clarity.

“Can we spin to protect the starboard side?”

“Not easily, and we may crush some of the port side pods if we do.  And they are programmed to circle around me and away from the gravity well.”

“Do what you can to get them all away Rommie,” Shin whispered as he scrambled to check the rest of the bridge crew that was still lying on the decking near their stations.  In his heart he knew it was too late, but he had to at least check.  His Grandfathers were dead, Song of Winter was a crumpled heap of green chitin, Uncle Ville was sprawled limply back away from the navigation console and Shi-sho Vym was a limp bundle of blood matted blue and violet fur.  Uncle Bam was weakly crawling toward his life mate.  Shin whimpered and helped the dying Nietzschian over to his dying lover.

His eyes burned when he heard Ville whisper brokenly that he’d wait for Bam and heard Bam sob Ville’s name.  There was just so much blood, he knew it was futile but he couldn’t help trying to slow the bleeding that had stained his uncle’s uniform jacket a deeper scarlet.  There were too many places where his console had torn into his abdomen and chest. His gray green eyes snapped up to lock with his uncle’s bright blue ones as the older man’s bloodied hands stopped his from ripping his other sleeve off in pointless attempts at first aide.

“Proud of you.  Survive.”  Shin had never heard his uncle’s voice so thready and weak before.

Shin sobbed but turned and ran for the pod that had his name on it.

Bam smiled weakly and lay down next to his lover one last time and wondered if there was anything after death.  He had no regrets, not even for kissing Ville one last time in the corridor.

~0~

Chai screamed in pain as the heavy crane buckled and slung part of its load across the hallway.  He was pinned, and the rest of his evacuation team was too far ahead of him to help.  In a situation like this they were under orders to not stop or come back for him.  He tried desperately to shift the heavy beam to no avail.

“Chai!”

“Dorian,” Chai screamed for his best friend and long time lover and sobbed in relief as a familiar pair of warm hands touched his face.  He panted in agony as he locked eyes with Dorian’s warm gray eyes.

“Hang on,”  Dorian grabbed one end of the bean and hefted upwards as hard as he could, Chai sobbed in relief as he scooted backwards, out from under it as fast as he could.  Then Dorian had his shoulder under Chai’s and they were moving at an uncomfortable limping jog toward the escape pods.  Things were broken, his leg for one, but that could be dealt with after they were safe.

Time stretched strangely and they never seemed to get anywhere.

~0~

Shin panted and leaned hard on the bulkhead, all the pods on this side were gone but one that was missing its engines.  Useless.  He turned and thumped his shoulders against the wall and slid down to sit helplessly on the deck plates.

He could feel Andromeda fighting to stay outside that critical radius, fighting for her life as well as any other unlucky bastards like him who hadn’t been able to escape.  He bowed his head onto his knees and wept and waited for the end.

It never came.

~0~

Mei Ling waited in the gardens, she knew her countrymen would never allow her aboard their escape pod and it was highly improper for her to try and take a place on another.  Not for the first time she questioned why her people hated her for things beyond her control, wondered why the Commonwealth allowed such things to continue.  But there was little point now in such questions, so she just settled into a meditation posture in the center of the wrecked gardens and waited for the final silence to come.

She watched the starlight stretch and bend but it never broke even as useless tears streaked her face.

~0~

Andromeda fought, and gained an uneasy balance.  And there she waited in a timeless eternity for rescue or engine failure and doom.

~0~

Kiro kicked his heel idly over the arm of the pilots chair and stared at the stars drifting by.  They were on night cycle and the rest of the crew was asleep leaving him alone on watch.  A small monitor was playing an old horror flick he’d pieced together from bits found all over the place but it didn’t hold his attention.  Lumi had heard from Jan over net-space and had mentioned the smaller man had dropped hints as wide as a galaxy about some big job they were getting.

He’d wait and see, Jan was an incurable optimist, and it drove him and Yu crazy when Serenity and the Maru-ka were together. But the periodic feeling of wanting to throttle the small tech was worth it to be around to see him bounce and annoy Timo.  Kiro wondered if Timo would swap ships again when they met up again.  The short Nietzschian was always flipping back and forth between the two ships, never quite able to stay away from the hyper little human. 

Of course he couldn’t bring himself to be away from David very long either.  Something about the Callistan had caught Timo by the short hairs and just would not let him go, so he flipped between crews almost every time they crossed paths.  Which with Luminor and Jan always hopping net-space and chattering at each other exchanges and meet ups were pretty often, Kiro smiled faintly.  Lumi wasn’t a chatter box in person.  In the net spaces though he was a force of nature, all the charisma and energy his illness was sapping out of him coming across undiluted.

Thank all the gods that Captain Strify was just like his however many greats great grandmother Bekka.  Crew was family, and you sacrificed for family.  A lot of other captains would have ditched Lumi at the next port when he started showing signs of illness; some wouldn’t have waited until port either and some would have ditched Yu with him.  Kiro shot a glance back over the chair in the general direction of crew quarters and smiled.  The Phoenix brothers were something else.

A bleep from the com had him perking up.  It was deep in ships night and they were pretty far out, even if it was almost on a major shipping lane.  He flipped the switch and accepted the call.

“Maru-ka, pilot Cullen… hey Rom.”  Kiro smiled in delight at the familiar face of the Nietzschian pilot and captain.  When Romeo’s face didn’t lighten into an answering smile he knew something was up.  Something serious, maybe with listeners, so he swung around to sit properly in the pilot’s chair rather than continue draped over it sideways.

“Pilot; I have a business proposition for your captain.”  Kiro felt his eyebrows go up.  Yep, this was serious; Rom had his arms folded on his belly as he lounged back in his chair, his booted feet crossed casually at the ankles on the console near the camera.  Kiro leaned over and flipped another small lever, the one that linked to an alarm in Strify’s cabin.  In a few minutes he’d be up and moving forward.  Kiro didn’t flip that switch idly.

“Captain should be up momentarily.”  Kiro went through the motions of polite conversation but asked his more telling questions with what an untrained observer would take as fidgeting.  The answers he got back from the idle movements of Rom’s fingers, hands and arm spikes was both scary as fuck and reassuring.

He heard Strify cussing under his breath as he climbed the ladder into the cockpit, but that stopped when he registered Kiro’s oddly formal words.  Strify’s face went carefully blank as Kiro looked up at him and with far more formality than normal gave him the chair back. Half the time Strify tickled him or just hefted him bodily out of the chair.

“Captain Nightingale, what can I do for you this fine morning?”  Kiro took the hint and scampered for the ladder and slid down it.  Curious he might be, but he also valued his ears.  An annoyed captain Jack Strife could shout down a force wall if he set his mind to it.

Kiro’s boots hit the decking and he turned to find Luminor waiting, curled by the jack on the wall at the base of the ladder.  He must have been sleeping with the Captain again; he was wearing one of Strify’s white button down shirts. The tall man set a fingertip to his lips and pulled Kiro down beside him.  Kiro’s eyes went round.  Lumi was jacked in and offering a set of ear buds, the short pilot grabbed one and stuffed it into his ear and leaned into Lumi’s frail body.  The feel of long slender fingers carding through his hair was a comfort as he focused his mind on listening intently to the conversation.

~0~ _skips back to the alarm Kiro set_ ~0~

Strify was just getting settled back in after a quick trip to the head.  Luminor had shifted back to curl around him, still sleekly naked after their earlier bought of lovemaking.  He was comfortable, warm and felt pretty good about life in general other than the constant low level worry about his lover’s health.

Then the pilot alarm went off.

Kiro was on watch, it was deep in the ships night so there were only a very few things that would make him trip that alarm. 

He’d seen something on the scanners that bothered him.  Not likely, if something jumped out Kiro would have them out of the way and gone in an instant, the little guy kept four slipstream jumps in his head for any given location, more if possible.  It was one of the many things that made him such an amazing pilot, the ability to calculate jumps on the fly like that.

Another possibility was he’d had a red light come up on his boards, but that wasn’t likely to be it either.  If it was he’d have woken Yu to go deal with it.  Similarly his feeling unwell would have had him waking Davii.

So that left someone calling them who would only speak to the captain.

Strify grumbled as he groped for clothing and pulled it over his body again.  He’d been looking forward to his snuggle time and maybe another round of gentle loving with Luminor.  The last treatment Linke and Jan had found was very old but seemed to help some.  At least Lumi had a bit more energy.  They had another one, a complimentary treatment that they were still gathering materials for David to make.

Strify growled as he shoved his feet into cold boots and with a peck on the lips of his lover headed toward command.  He hoped Lumi would just go back to sleep, but in his heart knew his lover would be dressed and at the foot of the ladder jacked in to listen in to any conversations.

Comforting as it was he half wished Lumi would save his strength.  But many times in the past he’d been grateful for Luminor’s analytical and observant mind.

He set his hands and feet on the ladder and began to climb still swearing idly under his breath.  Halfway up Strify paused in his climb.  Kiro as being _awfully_ formal, and that _sounded_ like Romeo.

What in space could Romeo have found that would have Kiro going all formal on them?  They’d only been shipmates for five and a half years before Rom had gotten Serenity.  Hell, even now three odd years later the two ships and crews orbited around each other with astonishing frequency.

That thought had him doing some math in his head.

Fourteen years, he’d been free for fourteen years.  He’d had Lumi for almost thirteen of that, Rom and Davii for a bit over eleven, Kiro for eight. Strify smiled faintly and shook his head to clear his mind and climbed the last few rungs into the bridge.

Kiro formally gave him his chair back and scampered for the ladder to slide down.  He made a small mental bet with himself and sure enough a tiny blue light lit up on his boards, Lumi was jacked in already so that meant Lumi had handed Kiro a headset.  Good enough, Kiro sometimes saw things they missed.

“Captain Nightingale, what can I do for you this fine morning?”

Romeo quirked an eyebrow at him and gave him a tiny nod. Strify smiled, Rom was excited about something but he was going to have to fish for it.

Strify leaned casually back in his chair as he and Romeo exchanged the expected pleasantries, he’d seen glimpses of a Nightsider and several large types that his mind immediately classified as hired muscle.  Rom was being **_far_** to calm, he _hated_ having thugs on his ship.  There must be a huge ass prize waiting for him to put up with it.

From the finger and arm spike twitches, little dips of Rom’s head and elevations of his eyebrows he expected trouble but thought the prize was worth it.

They made arrangements to meet up near Hephaestus.  Once the connection was cut Strify was coding in the new course.  He might not be the extraordinary pilot Kiro was, but he was more than capable of piloting _his _ship to the rendezvous point.

It was only three slipstream points from here anyway.

~0~

Yu jolted awake when he felt the ship move into slipstream and was up and staggering toward the command deck before his brain had caught up with the fact that his body was awake.

His brother wasn’t curled in his bunk, but that wasn’t all that uncommon; he slept with the captain quite routinely.  A look down into Kiro’s hole showed everything was dark except for the tiny blue light he left on when he was on watch.  Yu turned and almost flattened David.  The slender Callistan slid to one side and snuggled under Yu’s arm with a small giggle.  Yu sighed and gave the shorter man a one armed hug and briefly buried his nose in the fine black mop of silk that passed for hair on his species.

David wasn’t trying to keep up his illusion of humanity tonight; his eyes were a soft uniform blue with the black double pinpoints of his pupils.  Yu sighed but didn’t try too hard to pull away when David hung onto him and braced against the portal that lead down to his bunk.  Yu just accepted the familiar oddness and braced as well.

The ship shuddered and Yu was glad he’d braced, as it was he and David were in a tangled heap on the decking.  The little giggle out of David told Yu that the little medic had expected it and was enjoying the contact.  Sometimes he really didn’t understand Callistan’s.  They were just **so** _tactile_.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to ask some pointed questions of this one.

“So, what’s the crystal ball say?” He asked tapping David on the forehead.  Yu was used to David’s ability to see parts of the future, nothing terribly clear, but like knowing when to brace for turbulence sometimes very useful.

“We’re meeting Serenity.”  Yu felt his eyebrows go up and chewed at one of his lip rings.  They’d met up a couple weeks ago at Helsinki Drift, swapped Timo back and shared some good times in port with Jussi and Jyrki and the rest of that mad crew.  Listened to Jussi gripe about new restrictions on Sanguniæ, watched Jyrki calm his volatile lover with a little nip and in general had a fun.  It was a bit soon to be crossing paths again unless something had happened.

Rom was an oddity, he was half blooded  Not half Niet and half human like most mixed bloods; he was half Callistan and David’s half brother.  His _elder_ half brother; and with David being firmly a part of Maru-ka’s crew Romeo had extended an odd form of protection over the rest of the crew.

Rom was a Kodiak, he might not be the favored child but he **was** accepted.  Rom had decided that the crews of Serenity and Maru-ka were kin. Yu remembered **that** fight, and winced at the memory.  Romeo had kicked some serious butt that day before the top dog had called a halt to the brawl.  Tyr might be a scary ass bastard but he had some fondness for his own bastard child.  That said bastard child had been well on his way to kicking the asses of several of the Prides top alphas could be part of why they’d been so generous at the time.  Yu had made a mental note to never really piss off the other man.

Sometimes that connection was useful when dealing with other Nietzschian Prides; sometimes it was a rampaging pain in the ass.

“Anything else?”  Yu stroked soft black hair away from those pretty blue eyes and traced a fingertip over the delicate patterns on those translucent eyelids.  David sighed and leaned into the touches.

“Nothing clear, just something big.”

Yu sighed and braced again, cuddling David into his lap.  He wondered what qualified as ‘something big’ to David.

~0~

Romeo hated having Nightsiders on his ship.  Franky, bless him, was being the absolute picture of grace and hospitality and was keeping friction down between Garpenitx’s hired goons and the crew.  Jan was hiding out in the engine room, Juri had reverted to a mute statue and Linke was being aloof again.  Timo had planted himself beside Jan and was refusing to be moved. Romeo idly kicked his boots up to rest on a safe section of the console and stared out the front view screen at the black hole that held their prize.

There was an old Commonwealth ship in there, on the fringes just waiting to be tipped in or pulled free.  Something about Hephaestus and Commonwealth ships, Romeo twirled a strand of black hair between his fingers.  Why they used this particular black hole to dispose of the raddled husks of old ships he had no idea, but they weren’t looking for a stripped derelict.

They were looking for a lost warship.

Romeo idly tapped in a request with one hand on the command computer and moments later there was a blinking square on his screen.  Their target was a swirl of gleaning silver under magnification, a delicate looking twist of metal, incongruously beautiful for a weapon of bloody warfare.  An older warship for certain, they hadn’t made them like that in well over five hundred years.

She made his spines itch.

A swirl of colors attracted his attention.  Off to his left the Maru-ka was streaking out of slipstream dragging a swirl of wildly colored matter with her as she came.  She wasn’t as graceful as Serenity, but the Maru-ka had her own beauty.  She was a squat almost square old cargo ship, one of the newer ships of the Valentine Line, only a hundred years or so old.

Strify had been careful and very wise in the ship he snatched from his Grandmother when he made his bid for his own freedom.  She was a ship that would blend in anywhere, and clearly hadn’t been missed from his family’s fleet.

A bleep told him he had an incoming transmission, Romeo flipped the switch to accept.

“Romeo Nightingale,” he started, then stopped and smiled faintly.  “Hello Jack.”  Strify must have tossed his ship into the nearest available slipstream to get here this quickly.  The other captain was still in the sleeveless white undershirt he’d been in fourteen hours ago when they’d last spoken.  That or Davii had another premonition and had them waiting for his call.  Neither would surprise him really, not after them both being held on Morglu and the bloody mess that had been to escape from.

“Rom,” Strify smirked at him and Romeo felt himself smiling openly back.  “So where’s this pretty you need help picking up?”  Romeo hooded his eyes and grinned.

“Why don’t you come over and we can talk about it?”  The bell like sounds of Strify’s delighted laughter had him relaxing.  Jan had found half a dozen extra life-signs where there should only be cargo, with the rest of his brothers nearby he felt quietly confident that they could shut down any double cross plot of Garpenitx’s

“Kiro’s dancing up into position.”  Strify shifted a bit and Romeo could see the smaller man caressing the controls with exquisite skill.  A glance at his sensors and Romeo could see the blocky freighter type lifting up and spinning around graceful as a mei-thai butterfly to settle just above the sleeker Firefly.  The faintest thunk echoed through Serenity’s hull as the Maru-ka settled into place.  Romeo had no doubt that Kiro had planted their hatches mere centimeters apart.

“Linke,” Romeo called back and was pleased to hear the pilot answer promptly.

“Yeah boss?”

“That’s the Maru-ka knocking, do let our brothers in.”

“Gotcha.  Juri’s down in the galley putting on coffee.”  Romeo smirked in amusement.  Jan and Lumi had probably already made it clear who was knocking.  He turned back to his screens and made the same teasing offer he had for the last three years of meet ups.

“Mr. Cullen, how do feel about changing jobs?”

Kiro gave him a triangular grin, then answered the same way he had every time before.  He stuck out his pointed little tongue and gave Romeo the finger with both hands before he started locking down navigation.

“Hey!”  Strify mock swatted at the screen.  “No stealing my pilot!”  Strify was stressed, Romeo could tell, but was covering remarkably well with teasing.  Romeo also knew that unless something happened and they had to all be on one ship again Kiro would _never_ go anywhere without Yu.

A heavy clunk and a soft hiss of equalizing pressure told Romeo the hatches were mated and open.

“Get your ass over here you pirate,” Romeo growled.  Strify laughed and blew him a kiss before the video feed cut out.

~0~_ [gübre bomba lanet = fucking dung bomb]_ ~0~

The thugs had gathered around the hatch as the other ships crew slid down the temporary ladder into Serenity.  A couple had growled appreciatively as Luminor’s slender body dropped smoothly to the decking.  Romeo had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his amusement in check as Lumi walked past the leering muscle with as much grace and dignity as the trained Companion could manage.  Which was quite a lot really.

Franky’s face lit up and the two exchanged graceful hugs and cheek kisses of very old friends before the shorter brown haired man herded the taller black haired man into the galley.  Romeo wished he could just sit and watch the two go through the graceful motions of a tea ceremony, but he had hired thugs and a gübre bomba lanet of a Nightsider on his ship.  Grace and culture would have to wait until the vermin were safely **off** his decks.

The ogling didn’t stop with Lumi either, David dropped to the decking and pounced Timo as soon as he saw the shorter Nietzschian.  The remarks the thugs exchanged had him growling hinder his breath.  That was _his_ baby brother they were treating like a piece of meat.

One idiot made a motion to touch David’s soft hair and quickly yanked his hand back when Timo snarled, displaying the sharp serrated canines of his Tiger ancestry.  Romeo coughed mildly, and Timo scowled as he hauled a willing David into the galley with him.  The shaken merc grinned weakly at the teasing of his fellows, but he had no idea how lucky he was.  Timo was Tiger Pride; they tended to be massively protective of mates and offspring, more so than almost any other Nietzschian pride.  Romeo gave himself a purely mental shake.  Timo hadn’t mated to anyone as far as he knew, and he’d better be gentle with David or he’d rip his Tiger head right off.

Yu dropped smoothly to the floor and exchanged a quick shoulder buffet with Juri.  They’d be talking the latest high profile piloting stunts as soon as they felt comfortable.  Strify dropped in next, and Romeo had to stifle a grin.

Strify was in sleek black sim-leather trousers that showed every graceful line of his thighs and ass, a flowing white shirt and a close fitting sleeveless jacket that had a hem swirling around the ankles of his knee high boots.  The hat, gloves and cane were just the finishing touches.  He’d called Strify a pirate, Strify dressed as a pirate.  Romeo couldn’t stop the little bark of laughter that escaped as Strify gave each of the thugs a thorough once over with his eyes then turned on his heel to stalk up to Romeo.

Not for the first time Romeo wondered how he had managed to become friends with a man who was as flamboyant as a Jaguar.  His plain ship leathers looked positively acetic next to Strify’s.

“Romeo,” Strify greeted with a wicked gleam in his eyes.  Romeo sighed, oh how he wished this tactic wasn’t so effective.  Strify looked a complete fop, but he knew from experience Strify’s apparently unarmed appearance was a pretty and lethal lie.  He had a small but viciously overpowered blaster tucked under his left armpit, virbo blades tucked up each sleeve and that damn cane hid a longer blade if Strify didn’t choose to just use it as is to break heads.

“Jack,” Romeo answered and braced himself to be flirted with. “Where’s Kiro?”  Strify eyes lit with glee and Romeo had to close his eyes.  This was going to be _far_ more exciting than he wanted.

“Oh, he’ll be here.” The wicked smile had Romeo sending up a brief prayer to his ancestors that the other man wasn’t about to do what he thought he was going to do.  “Oh Ki~ro,” Strify called up the access hatch.  Romeo let out a silent groan.  He was going to do it; he really was going to do it.  “Kiro pet, come.”

A small body wrapped in white dropped straight down without touching the ladder.  Romeo whimpered a little but the sound was drowned out by the reactions of the three great lunks around Kiro.  Kiro was tiny, wrapped in snug white sim-leather trousers, an open white vest and close fitting climbing boots.  His arms were bare but his hands were covered in fingerless white climbing gloves.  With his bi-colored hair straightened and sleeked to one side of his small face he looked edible and completely harmless.

What a lie.  Kiro was as harmless as a pissed off Rella viper and twice as poisonous.

Romeo braced and closed his eyes as one of the thugs reached for Kiro’s shoulder.  A startled yell and loud thud and Kiro hissing told Romeo it was safe to open his eyes.  The thug was on his back looking shell shocked at the sight of a wafer thin flex blade aimed right at his throat.  Flex blades were infernally difficult to use and were Kiro’s weapon of choice for close combat.

Strify let out a little ‘tisk’ noise and snapped his fingers. “Kiro pet, no blood on our dear friends deck if you please.” Strify snapped his fingers again and Kiro rose and with a final hiss at the thugs slunk with incredible grace over to Strify to take a position crouched at his feet, between Strify and the thugs.  Romeo let a small twitch of a smile light his face.  He could just imagine the yelling match that had happened before they had mated ships.  Kiro **_hated_** playing the attack pet role.

Kiro was Ssullian, and small Ssullians were far and away more deadly than their larger kin.  Never mind that to the average observer a small Ssulli looked like an average sized human.  Kiro was _tiny_ even for a small Ssullian.  He’d been a slave once, years ago and Strify had found him, Romeo remembered that trip _very_ clearly.  It was before he’d acquired Serenity and they’d broken into two crews.

The contract had tried to double cross them but because they had been kind to him Kiro had switched sides.  That Lumi had found and disabled his control chip had helped tremendously and made his former owner learn a hard lesson on why you needed to treat your pets with affection and respect.  Of course he’d died moments later, but it was still a good object lesson for the few survivors of that mess.  It had also served as a pointed reminder to his new crew mates that small did not mean helpless or harmless.

It was only later that they’d learned the tiny thing had skills other than close quarters combat and cuddling.  He was a phenomenal pilot, he could do things with a freighter that were impossible for anyone else, just like Lumi and Jan could make computer systems sit up and beg, Yu could get impossible exchange coefficients out of any engines he touched and Linke could talk to just about anything breathing.

Romeo relaxed marginally and let a small real smile escape.  Strify somehow knew exactly what was needed to keep the opposition off balance; Garpenitx looked beside himself in confusion.

“Pirate,” this time he said the word fondly.  He looked down and gently stroked Kiro’s hair.  “Hello Kiro.” The thugs looked at him like he’d lost his mind and clearly expected him to be handed the bleeding stump of his hand.  But Kiro just let out a little chirp and scrubbed his cheek into Romeo’s thigh.  His eyes were locked on the Nightsider and the thugs though, just like they should be if he was still nothing more than a very lethal and expensive pet.

Romeo wanted this job done; he liked the real Kiro better.  Seeing him like this made him uncomfortable.

“Coffee, Jack?  We made a stop not long ago at Corlumnis and you know how Franky is.”  Romeo led the way toward the galley and bantered back and forth with Strify as a silent and watchful Kiro guarded their backs.

~0~

It wasn’t the most comfortable get together they’d ever had.  Not with four outsiders making themselves an unpleasant lump on one side of the table.  Lumi and Franky though managed to serve everyone with a minimum of fuss.  Strify smiled as Lumi set two mugs in front of him, one laden with steamed milk and sweetened cream the other black and laden with sugar.  The second he passed over to Kiro where the small man had curled up on the table, he was deeply in character and right now would likely refuse to accept anything from anyone but him.  But Franky’s coffee was a treat Kiro would never forgive him for if he had to miss out.

Then Franky set about petting Kiro, and Strify had to stifle his amusement, both of them acting like pretty little pets and both of them dangerous as hell.  A tiny stroke to the bit of bare skin between the bottom of Kiro’s vest and the waistband of his trousers let the smaller man know it was okay to appear to relax a little.

It was distracting as hell to the Nightsider and his goons, and Strify had to admit watching Kiro accept little bites of food from Franky’s fingertips was rather… well, hot was a good word.  And that was before the little minx began licking crumbs from those slim fingers and sucking the tips into his mouth.  Franky’s smug little cream pot smile and soft affectionate words certainly didn’t help.  He had to stomp on his libido hard and remember he had his Luminor to play with later.

Business, this was business.  Strify exchanged a look with Romeo and was somewhat relieved to see laughter and low level arousal dancing behind the Nietzschian’s blue eyes even if his face was still a polite mask.  Linke and Juri leaned against the bulkhead behind Romeo with their mugs of tea, rather like an overly tall and slightly mismatched set of bookends.  Linke’s neural net had the small wireless jack plugged in, the slow steady blink of the blue light said he was monitoring systems as he watched his lover play with Kiro on the table.

Strify took another casual look around and mentally kicked himself, Jan had his wireless in as well and Lumi had tucked his in under the soft violet fluff of the feathered scarf around his neck.  Timo was trying to be all sober and watchful, but was failing epically with a wriggly and cuddly David in his lap trying to feed him tidbits.  Amusingly they were distracting the goons almost as well as Franky and Kiro were.  Strify felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards, bunch of perverts.

He yanked his mind back to business; he didn’t like all the unknowns of the Nightsider’s plan.  But Jan bounced up and plunked himself on the table as well to spread a sheaf of plasti-film diagrams over the clear space.  Kiro jumped a bit and let out a small hissy spit noise, but settled as soon as Jan leaned in and rubbed noses with him.

Strify allowed the faintly fond smile out at the sight of the tiny human and even tinier Ssullian rubbing noses and cheeks like two felines in a friendly greeting.  The fact that the one goon was watching with the widely dilated eyes of a man hopelessly in lust didn’t hurt.

Idiot.

Strify turned his attention to the diagrams Jan was cheerfully explaining and chewed his lip in thought.  That was one seriously big ship.  It would take Serenity and the Maru-ka and every towing engine they could cobble together to pull her free.  Even that was a bit iffy, but Jan had a plan and from the faint smirk on Linke’s face the other tech geek had added his own angles to it.

This could get complicated.

~0~

Strify groaned at Luminor’s whispered words.  Things had been complicated enough just with pulling that huge ship free of Hephaestus’s gravity well, learning that there were at least six more goons to deal with added another unneeded layer of trouble.  Lumi also suspected the ship had been bugged, which pissed Strify off to no end.  But shit like that was why they had their own little code language.

But the way Lumi’s lips were pressing on his throat Strify thought his fragile lover was planning on messing with any observers a bit more directly.  Before his exhibitionist lover could press further Strify flipped them over and traced his tongue around the port on Lumi’s neck.

Predictably that had the taller man moaning and going to jelly under his hands.  Strify grinned ferally as he kissed, nipped and stroked his way down his lover’s long frame.  Feeling slender fingers lacing into his hair and tugging made him chuckle wickedly.  He lingered over Lumi’s hips bones, painfully sharp in his illness but still one of his lover’s biggest erogenous zones.  A few long lingering kisses that left darkening marks in a fine trail behind them had Luminor writhing.  Sucking that slim, hard length down had Luminor arching and pleading even as Strify groped for a tube of lube.

Looking up Strify saw Lumi’s pale gray green eyes had darkened with want and all of his cool aloof act had disintegrated into fire and passion and sweet wanton need.  Strify smiled and slicked two fingers, then reached down between willingly spread thighs to trace little circles around that tight little hole.

~0~

Kiro growled to himself, hating that he had to stay in character as a guard pet.  The sounds of Lumi and Strify loving were making him horny and he couldn’t go bother his favorite playmate.  Yu was curled up on Serenity with Linke and Jan anyway, plotting out how many thruster modules they’d need to place on the prize and their locations.

A rustle where there should have been silence had him turning his head to look.  Kiro felt his eyes narrow as the idiot from earlier crept around the corner.  He’d stripped off most of his body armor and it looked like all his weapons and was creeping stealthily down the corridor calling softly under his breath.

“Kitty, kitty, here kitty.”  Kiro let out a low growl in irritation; he hated being called like an animal.  The idiot jumped and turned.  Not the most observant human in the galaxy, an object dressed in _white_ tended to stand out in a dark hallway.  Kiro sighed and waited, standing poised in case the idiot tried anything.

The merc smiled and Kiro idly noted that if he hadn’t used his face to open a few to many doors he’d have been a striking specimen.  The short sandy brown hair looked soft and his eyes were a warm blue green.  Kiro noted he was smart enough to approach with some caution this time, reached a hand tentatively toward Kiro as he edged closer.

“Hi kitty, pretty kitty.”  Kiro tipped his head to one side but kept his expression inscrutable.  This guy easily had thirty centimeters of height on him.  And clearly hadn’t learned that height and mass wasn’t going to always help him in a fight.  He stayed still and waited as the poor fool crept closer, even let him cup one cheek in his big hand.  From the way he was breathing and how his pupils were dilating the sound of Lumi pleading for more as Strify fucked him hard were getting to him.

The merc dropped to his knees and cupped Kiro’s face in both his big hands.  Kiro blinked and tipped his head the other way in confusion.  That was new, normally when a guy tried to grab him it was a violent grab and throw down, not like this.  The kiss was rather nice though, poor stupid bastard was probably a romantic still.  Kiro relaxed a tiny bit and let the bigger man deepen the kiss, even managed a creditable imitation of hesitancy as he reached up to run his fingers over the big man’s biceps.

That earned him a low groan and the feel of an arm around his waist pulling his body flush to the warmth of the bigger man.  Kiro winced at the needy cries from the captain’s berth; Lumi was going to be a bit shaky tomorrow if Strify wasn’t careful.  Until they got the tech healthy again he really didn’t have the stamina for the long drawn out lovemaking Strify was rather infamous for. His partner took that flinch as a cue to move his oral explorations down Kiro’s throat.  Kiro gave the guy credit, he wasn’t rushing and he was rather good at the foreplay.

Then he found Kiro’s nipples and sucked on them hard enough that Kiro arched into it and whimpered.  Hell with it, he wanted to fuck.  He pushed the bigger man down with a growl and pounced.  A strangled yelp was the only real reaction as Kiro went directly for the guys trousers.  The battered dark leathers were flung aside and Kiro quickly shimmied out of his own pristine white ones.  The poor guy’s eyes were wide in shock, but he wasn’t complaining.  When Kiro growled and moved to line his dick up he even tried to slow him down.

“Shh, kitten, slow down,” a low moan as Kiro nipped at his shoulder, just breaking the skin, but he wasn’t dissuaded.  “Kitten, I don’t want to hurt you.”  Kiro growled but let him rummage in one of the many pockets on his vest for a small packet of lube.  Someone had come prepared.  The packet ripped open easily in the big man’s teeth and Kiro waited as he coated his fingers.  Gentle knuckles brushed down his belly and past his hard cock.  They circled his entrance for a moment then plunged right in, Kiro arched and moaned in reaction.  This guy was good; he found the pleasure button right off as was ruthlessly massaging it as his big fingers worked to stretch Kiro loose enough to slide his dick in.

It didn’t take terribly long, Kiro played with Yu quite regularly so he knew how to relax.  But amusingly the poor idiot was taking far more care than needed.  Kiro growled and shoved his playmate flat on the decking and moved to straddle him.  This time he helped line things up and held Kiro’s hips as he rode down hard.  The little whimper of pleasure had the guy clutching him tight and thrusting up hard.

Oh that was nice; not as nice a Yu in him but still nice, Kiro writhed down and rocked up then back down hard again, faster, faster.  A hand on his dick had him snarling and slapping it aside, he would finish in his own time.  He rode down harder and faster making his playmate writhe and buck up into him hard with a strangled cry.  Kiro grunted in pleasure as he let his peak hit, then he snuggled down into his limp playthings chest.  Time to finish things, his teeth ached and his belly burned.

A startled cry of pain was punctuated by Strify’s amused voice.

“Something to be aware of,” Strify warned as he leaned against the bulkhead. “He bites.”  Lost blue green eyes looked up at the captain as Kiro continued sucking hungrily from the open wound on the man’s shoulder.  “Oh, you didn’t _know_ about the paralytic?” Strify made a mock sorrowful face.  “Dear me, unfortunate that.”  Strify paced over completely calm and relaxed in spite of his debauched and nude state and squatted beside the unfortunate man’s head to stroke a bit of hair back from his forehead.  “He won’t kill you, well, unless you’re _allergic_ to him anyway.”

The unfortunate man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out.  Kiro grumbled but lapped at the slowing flow of blood until it stopped then looked up at Strify with a sated grin.  Strify sighed before asking.

“Better?”

“Mmm,” Kiro agreed stretching.  “Much.”

“Go shower, I’ll deal with our uninvited guest.”  Kiro tipped his head up for a kiss, but Strify only dropped one on his temple.  “Shower,” he ordered sternly. “I’m not kissing you with another man’s blood in your mouth.”

Kiro let out a little ‘pft’ noise but obediently got off his victim and gathered his clothing to walk back toward the head and a shower.

~0~

The amusement on Romeo’s face when Strify literally dropped the unfortunate merc back through the hatch to the decking helped with Strify’s irritation at having to haul the great lunk over in the first place.

The fact that Strify had followed that up by dropping the fools discarded trousers and boots on top of him and that one of his fellow mercenaries was standing right there with a horror struck look on his face only made it sweeter.  Of course the idiot **did** have a very large and bloody mark still oozing sluggishly on his shoulder and was liberally coated in come so it probably looked like he’d been mauled in several very interesting ways.

“Kiro?”  Romeo asked with laughter clear in his tone as he looked up through the hatch at Strify’s bare chest.

“Of course,” Strify answered in a similarly mild but amused tone.

“You haven’t been feeding him?”  Strify smirked at the stricken look on the conscious merc’s face.  The story he was writing in his head was probably **_far_** more entertaining than the reality was anyway.

“Of course we feed him.  But you know Ssulli,” Strify shrugged idly, “they periodically like hunting their own food.”  The strangled squeak from the merc was worth Kiro’s weight in platinum.  But Strify pretended not to notice that as the man scrambled to drag his fallen compatriot away.

Yu came up the corridor looking back over his shoulder in confusion.  He blinked up at Strify and opened his mouth to ask the question, but Romeo beat him to it.

“Kiro went hunting.”  Yu’s jaw clicked shut and he blinked again, staring after the fallen merc in confusion.

“Oh.” Yu have himself a shake and raked his hair away from his face. “I guess I better go keep him company then hunh?”

“That might be wise,” Strify agreed mildly.  Yu turned and scrambled up the ladder past Strify, leaving both captains manfully trying to reign in their giggles.

~0~

Kiro delicately nudged the throttle of the Maru-ka to bring her in line with Serenity on the third day of their pull.  The prize was freaking huge and Garpenitx estimates on mass were low, way, **_way_** low.  Fortunately between them Linke, Jan and Yu had cobbled together a better set of thruster packs to help push. In another, he checked the chron, thirty five hours the prize would be clear enough of the gravity well to risk putting someone aboard to see if her navigation was still usable.  Kiro already knew he was the pilot of choice there with Linke and Yu for engineering.

At least there were enough pilots that no-one had to do more than eight hours in the seat before someone sent them off to a bunk for some downtime.

~0~

Strify watched as David gently injected Lumi’s medication and tried not to be jealous as Franky brushed his lovers long black hair in smooth even strokes.  Maybe this time they’d have it right and Lumi would start really getting better.  Jan and Linke had gone rummaging some locked parts of the All Systems Library and come up with a few new, or rather some very **_old_** treatments for Luminor’s condition.  The last one they had tried had helped some; at least it had made it where Lumi wasn’t fading every time he looked at him.

His wrist chron vibrated and Strify turned and headed up to the bridge for his turn at the helm.

~0~

Andromeda felt strange, like she was being pulled through overly thick and sticky atmosphere.  It nagged her, she knew this feeling.  She began rummaging through her data banks.  Hunt, Dylan, Hephaestus, Thomas and William, her captain, her _captains_ were dead.  She couldn’t stop the low moan that echoed down her corridors.

A sound from within had her snapping back to full awareness.  She’d fallen into Hephaestus again and again she was being pulled out.  Andromeda checked the data streams around her and let out a low groan.  Not again.  At least this time it was only a hundred and sixty years rather than over three hundred.

The plaintive voice called her again and she turned her attention inward and tracked it down.  She still had crew aboard. 

She still had a crew, two Lancers, a botanist and the grandchild of her captains.

Mei Ling was in the gardens.  Dorian and Chai Deveraux were moving unsteadily down a corridor toward a small aide station and Shin-yavi Ellai-Hunt was huddled by an empty pod bay.

She still had a captain.

He was nineteen, and calling for her.

Andromeda groaned and began the process of picking up the pieces so what was left of her poor battered crew could start healing and reorienting to a different universe than the one they’d left.

~0~

Luminor chewed his lip and focused on the odd little life sign blips.  Jan was right they were rather off.  Just for the sake of comparison he turned his attention toward the net space around the prize they were towing and idly poked at it, twisting and pulling the fabric as he asked his questions.  The end result was a wire frame schematic of the ship with four vibrantly green dots and several areas of fainter green wash.  Gardens or Hydroponics?  Something alive certainly; there was really no way to tell exactly what sort of life without going over and looking.  He wouldn’t have the locations of decks or hangers to fill in the frame until they got over and looked, but he was used to that.

Luminor frowned and turned toward his representation of the Maru-ka, five brilliant sparks lit that framework.  Two in David’s quarters, one in Strify’s, one on the command deck and the one in his quarters.  Long familiarity let him identify David, Timo, Strify and Kiro.  He ignored his own wobbly life sign for the moment.

He focused his attention back on Serenity.  Romeo was on command, Jan and Linke and Yu were in engineering.  Franky was curled up in his shuttle and Juri was rummaging in the mess.  There were four other bright sparks in the passenger quarters; Garpenitx and his goons.

That didn’t explain the six faint and oddly blurry green pinpoints in Serenity’s hold.  He rather thought Romeo and Strify were right, there was a double cross being set up.  Whatever they were using to mask themselves sucked, he could do better in his sleep.

Idly he looked back at the prize ship and felt his virtual self lurch violently backwards and back into his body.  He stared blindly up at the ceiling of the small cabin he shared with his brother.  The four bright sparks had _moved_.

There were still **_people_** on that ship.

~0~

Mei carefully teased the derma-seal into lying smoothly over Chai’s leg.  The broken bones were fused and the worst of the tissue damage had been repaired.  The pilot would still be in pain for several weeks as the nerves adjusted to being whole again.  Dorian hovered anxiously and Shin watched with a faintly pensive look that made him look eerily like holos of his Great-great Grandfather.  She wondered what Dylan Hunt would think of this descendant of his; given what the goddess Trance had told her about the man she rather thought he would be pleased with his great-great grandson.

“Have we nanites available Andromeda?”  Mei knew very well they had them available, they’d been fully loaded for their diplomatic circuit, but it was still polite to ask.  And unwanted throwback or not, her teachers had still trained her to be polite.  Her face went pensive as Andromeda’s voice called down from above.

“Of course Mei Ling, the slot just to your left.”  A dispensary slot lit up helpfully and Mei took the auto injector.  Chai gulped and turned his face away with an exaggerated wince.  He hated injections with a pure and violent bloody passion.

“Thank you Andromeda.”  Mei rested the palm of her right hand over Chai’s eyes to help distract him and smiled wistfully as Dorian immediately stepped up to stroke slender fingers over his friends arm to help distract him as well.  Between them Chai didn’t flinch as the injector hissed and delivered its precious cargo.

She sighed and set the spent injector down in a recycle slot and turned back to watch Dorian fuss over Chai.  What would it have been like to have been born normal she wondered, to be loved and cherished like most Caili-Ssulli children?  If not for the words of their Goddess she would have been exposed shortly after her birth.

Mei sighed and lifted her chin, it didn’t bear thinking about.  The goddess Trance had swept into her mothers birthing room just as the midwives had begun exclaiming over her red hair and scooped her up.  Because of her words Mei had been allowed to live, been trained and given over to the Commonwealth as a botanist. Her people might not have _liked_ it, but they had obeyed even when the goddess had commanded her to be weapons trained the way most ñ-shiya në naish-da were.

What had the goddess Seen?  Mei often wondered, was this strange life out of time the way to make the most people happy?

She didn’t understand, but a great deal of what the goddess said didn’t make sense until after the advice was moot anyway.  So she went back to quietly ensuring her few crew mates were as healthy as they could be after their odd sidestep of time.

What else had changed? Everything? Nothing?  They would have to wait and see when their rescuers came aboard.

~0~

Shin had given the order for Rommie’s drones to start the clean up and what repairs they could do.  He couldn’t bear the thought that so many people were dead, even the ones who had lived through ejection and been picked up were now likely to be long, long dead.  It made him feel strange, his parents?  His sister?  Everyone he’d ever known was dead if what Rommie suspected was real.

And she’d lived through it once before, she should know.

Rommie was also seeing to the mortal remains of those who hadn’t survived to eject.  She’d done it without Shin asking, and he was grateful.

He was a child, a civilian with all the codes and knowledge of a captain of one of the Commonwealths finest ships of the line, but without the decades of training and discipline.  He didn’t understand why Grandpa Tom and Uncle Bam had both been planting the information in his head but they had.  It made him feel old, and at the same time far too young and it made his head feel too full, like he was crammed for an exam.  But _this_ information he couldn’t just shove to the back of his mind when the test was over.  It bubbled up every time he looked at a panel, walked down a corridor or glanced out a window.

Mei told him the information would settle as time went on, but her people taught by subliminals all the time.  He envied her the calm she felt.  He wondered if it was a girl thing or a culture thing and wished it would rub off on him.

Shin watched Mei gently turn Chai’s face away before hitting him with the injector of nanobots.  Her red hair up in a neat twist and her faintly golden hued skin glimmering softly in the med bay’s lights; he’d always thought she was beautiful.  But now she looked like some mythical healing goddess.

There were only four of them, only three fully able bodied on a ship that normally held a compliment of over three thousand, plus another thousand Lancers.

Shin had no idea where to start.

Their survival depended on him, and he had no idea what to do.

~0~

Kiro had a prickly feeling crawling up his spine.  Partly it was that he was waiting for Lumi to coax the prize ship into letting them land, partly it was the creeping shudders he always got the first time he set foot on a derelict ship.  The rest was the crawlies of having a fucking Nightsider and his goons on the Maru-ka.  The fact that the Nightsider had oozed concern to Strify about letting him pilot was only the least of it.

He wasn’t a fucking pet.

Lumi looked up at him with tired eyes and Kiro nodded grimly ghosting his hands over the controls to set them sliding into the opening bay.  Something was bothering the tech, but there hadn’t been time of real privacy enough to find out what.

The bay was fucking huge.  More than large enough for him to spin the Maru-ka around to face back out the way they’d come in.  The one goon was still watching him with faintly wary but hungry eyes.  The stupid sap wanted another round, but clearly was a bit wary of Kiro’s more primal urges.  It wasn’t like he went for blood all _that_ often.  Besides Yu tasted better and got off on being bitten.

A soft thunk of them settling to the decking had him sighing faintly.

“Atmosphere?”

“Appears normal captain,” Luminor’s voice was soft.  “I’m not picking up anything that looks remotely hazardous, and the entire hull appears to be holding the classic one atmosphere of pressure, with only a few small areas being higher or lower.”

Kiro continued with the lock down procedure, just as he and Strify had discussed as Strify continued asking pointed questions of Lumi.  Eventually the fidgeting of Garpenitx and his goons got to him and Kiro was out of the pilot’s chair and sliding down the ladder.

He could go organize hand lights and re-breathers while Strify drove the contract bat shit crazy.

~0~

The air wasn’t as stale as he had expected it to be, but Strify knew he was being irrational.  Kiro and Yu were on a search for the command deck with Luminor guiding them through their headsets.  They had a thug with them, and it made Strify very uncomfortable.

“Bring them in.” Strify stood and turned just in time to get clubbed hard enough in the head to send him back to his knees.  An overly muscled arm around his neck and a blasters muzzle pressing into his temple had him going very still and spreading his arms to the sides.  Lumi’s eyes had gone round but he froze when the grunt snarled at him to keep working.  Green eyes locked with teal gray and Strify nodded mutely even thought the motion made his head scream.

A bit earlier than anticipated, but here was the expected double cross.

~0~

Jan gulped and jacked in, Linke and Juri were limp on the deck, Franky had bolted and locked himself and David in his shuttle and were as safe as they could be for right now.  Timo he’d heard scream in rage, but couldn’t see if was alright or not and Romeo, Romeo was right in front of him.  His wrists force cuffed behind him, on his knees with two blaster rifles pointed at his head.

Linke’s hack program was running just like planned, but this lot wanted more results.

And they wanted them **_now_**.

Jan closed his eyes and went running through the net spaces of the ship hoping to find something, _anything_ to save his ship mates.

He found an angry brown haired, brown eyed A.I. that slapped him sideways and locked him up in a cage of code so tight his great grandpa Harper couldn’t have hacked his way loose.

“Oh shit. Uh, hi Babe. What’s a hottie like you doing in a place like this?”  Jan gulped when she just narrowed her eyes at him.

~0~

This little invader reminded her of Harper.  From his heavy boots and spiked blond hair, to the lean and compact body to the storm blue eyes, even the way the little menace talked dragged up memories of the engineer who had helped rescue her from Hephaestus before.  She narrowed her eyes and ran a scan.

Her eyes widened and she took a step back.

“**Harper**?”

Her captive’s eyes widened.

“My momma was a Harper, I’m a Werner.” He sounded confused; Andromeda took a risk and grabbed his code.  Jan yelped but gave her all the information she wanted.  She closed her eyes and quietly quarantined off the section of her systems that the breaker virus was working on and shifted them over to where the other hacker was working.

Reluctantly working she noted, as one of the larger men that she’d classified as pirates the instant they’d set foot on her decks held a gun to the temple of a slender man with bi-colored hair and flamboyant clothing who reminded her of a male version of Bekka Valentine.

She watched in faint horror as her young captain crept up on the cluster of mercs and the Nightsider who appeared to be in charge and let off a single, devastating shot with his force lance.

The Nightsider went down with a shriek into a bloodied pile of fur and all three mercs turned to return fire.  Shin turned tail and ran, trusting his knowledge of the corridors to keep him somewhat safe.

Andromeda groaned, that child was going to drive her just as insane as any of his ancestors had.  That move was _classically_ Dylan.

As the three turned and gave chase, the other hacker disengaged and turned to gather the other man into his arms.  Lovers she decided as the smaller man and his odd blond and black hair kissed the taller, frailer black haired man with fervent relief.

Dorian looked up at the ceiling and grinned, then blew her a kiss before he sobered and moved in to get the hostage and the hacker somewhere safe until they could figure out what to do with them.

She’d have to see about setting up a few rounds of proper gene therapy for the hacker, why he hadn’t been treated properly was just beyond her.

~0~

Romeo waited, biding his time.  He heard Linke whimper behind him but noted the two mercs didn’t budge.  He ran the numbers in his head. Garpenitx had three on the Maru-ka, there were two flanking him.  Two had debarked as soon as they landed, one was watching the bridge and one was watching the lock that lead to where David and Franky were holed up.

Then he saw a flash of black and blond hair and felt his eyes widen a trifle.  That was Strify, complete with a wicked grin and that nasty little blaster of his.  But who the heck was the slender brunet beside him and what the **hell** was he pointing their direction?

He closed his eyes and held in a groan by pure force of will at the plan Strify outlined to him with little hand flickers and jabs of his blaster.  But he snapped his eyes back open and gave the other captain a small nod.

Strify counted it down on one hand.

Three…

Two…

One…

Romeo rolled backwards and forced his arms down and under his buttocks and pulled his legs through.  He came back to his feet his bound hands now in front of him to see both his guards dead on the decking and Strify was running toward him.  Half a heartbeat later and Jan was up of his feet and un-jacked from the wall.

As expected the gunfire attracted attention.  Romeo brought his bound hands up as hard as he could under the bigger merc’s chin and took a vindictive glee in hearing bones go crunch.  One down, one to go, then they could track down the other vermin he knew about and remove them from existence.

Strify poked the fallen man with the toe of one boot then sighed in his normal melodramatic way.

“You really need to get laid more Rom, it might get rid of these anti social tendencies you have.”  Rom snorted and offered his hands to let Strify unlock them.  The stupid Merc had used the restraint cuffs that Serenity had, if needed he could have unlocked them himself.  It was just faster to let Strify do it.

“Who’s the guy with the boom stick?”  Romeo asked with a jerk of his chin toward the slender brunet who was cautiously poking his head into Serenity.

“Some Lancer, part of the original crew.”  Well _that_ was clear as mud.

“First Signifer Deveraux,” the other man answered absently. “Second Division Lancers, Andromeda Ascendant.”  He turned a looked back at them with amused gray eyes.  “But that’s a bit much… Call me Dorian.”  The smile had Romeo blinking as Jan came up and cuddled into his side.

“Jack in, let Franky and David know we’re down to one known hostile on the ship.”

“No we aren’t.”  Timo came out from behind a corner, bloodied, clearly still furious but otherwise undamaged.  Behind him Franky had the nasty crossbow that was his preferred on ship weapon and behind him David with his medical kit.

“We aren’t?” Romeo asked quietly.  Timo gave him a tight feral smile and held up his bloodied arm spines.  “Ah.  I’ll go see to clean up then.  Davii?  Can you patch up Linke and Juri?”  Like he even had to ask, his little brother was all but vibrating in place with wanting to check his friends.

All they had to do now was find the rest of their crew and that scumbag Nightsider and last of his goons.

~0~

Mei tipped her head and looked up at the man who was trying to take Andromeda.  He was tall, square and at some point in time might have been attractive, but she really didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

“Hello kitten,” he reached for her.  Mei knew what was expected and shrank back in the side alcove, if she could just get him away from the other one she could take him out of the picture.  Her gums burned with the venom she carried thanks to Andromeda’s help.  Chai had idly noted that her people where highly venomous, and why not thin the ranks a bit by letting them stalk ‘helpless’ prey and get bitten.  Mei hadn’t liked the plan; she’d been conditioned heavily all her life against biting.  But this was survival.

The pirate followed her back into the side alcove, still talking to her softly, trying to coax her out with soft words and pet names that made Mei feel dirty just by hearing them.  A few more steps, just a few more and he’d be out of line of sight of his partner.

Mei wondered idly why this one was in beaten black ship leathers and the other was in sleeker silver blue trousers and an open white vest.  She thought there was a third, dressed all in sleek white, but he was behind the man with red and black hair, and thus not a threat right now.

Another step and the invader began to lose patience and reached for her.  Mei faked a flinch and the man let his rifle go to grab with both hands.  The slimmer man was just at the entrance to the alcove, to fast, to soon.

He was yelling for the other man to stop but his bigger companion didn’t listen and clamped one hand on Mei’s shoulder and the other over her mouth.

Mei sank her teeth into his hand, and for the first time in her life felt her secondary needle teeth sink into living flesh, tasted the iron sweet taste of blood other than her own.

The man yelped and jerked his bitten hand back, and then he was shrieking as he fell, convulsing as the poison of Mei’s bite began taking effect.  Mei was curled on the decking trying to understand why her insides ached and she wanted to bite again.  The blood had tasted so good.

The other invader was running up and saw his fallen companion writhing. Oddly his face showed a mix of disgust and relief, and then his face was concerned as he turned to her.

He was still an invader. Mei cowered back and let the man loom over her.  If the third member of the group hadn’t come to the alcove she wouldn’t have missed her kick, but as it was he started and turned just as she kicked upwards toward his face and caught him hard in the chest instead.

Mei hissed in frustration and pulled her ti-thaks instead, so much for the easy way.  She pushed the burning in her belly and the ache in her gums aside for now.  Her ship mates were counting on her, she was trained for this.

~0~

Yu gasped and clutched his chest, if he hadn’t have moved she’d have kicked him in the face and possibly snapped his neck.  He could hear her hissing and Kiro’s deeper hiss-growls answering.  He rolled to his hands and knees and recoiled at the blackening skin of the merc he’d tried to stop.

She was Ssulli... and clearly just as venomous as Kiro when she chose to be.  Yu looked around frantically for his small crew mate.

He found Kiro with his hands full of his flex blades in a stance that always made him think of a dancer on a painted frieze, delicate, graceful and beautiful.  But Kiro’s stance was a prelude to bloodshed.  Strangely the girl was standing in a similarly graceful stance with what looked like two short pointed sticks in her hands.

Then they both moved and Yu was fighting to not scream, she was just as fast as Kiro and clearly each of their styles was intended to fight the others.  They leapt apart, the girl missing a chunk of hair and Kiro with a spreading pin prick of red covering his side.  Yu gulped and scrambled to his feet as the pair moved again.

If it weren’t for the fact they were trying to **kill** each other it would have been amazing to watch.

Then they locked up and Yu barely stifled a scream.  Her weapon was digging into Kiro’s side, his was lying across her throat and they were staring into each others eyes.

Stalemate.

~0~

Kiro growled in frustration.  He had her, one flick and she’d be dead, but her ti-thak was pressing into his side and he knew he wasn’t fast enough to escape the final stab.  She’d probably go right through him and tear out his spine.

Fuck.  Stalemate.

“Get off my ship, pirate.” The hissing chirps of his birth language rang in Kiro’s ears, archaic sounding, but still easily understandable.

“Salvage,” Kiro snarled back, “Not a pirate.”  His heart was still racing from the jolt of pure panic he’d felt when Yu had gone flying backwards.  If he hadn’t turned she could have snapped his neck with that kick, and she’d already bitten the idiot lunk who’d tried to grab her.  Kiro was betting he was very dead, pity; he was the only half decent one of the lot.

“Prove it.”

“**_What_**?”  Kiro’s voice clicked in shock.  “I can’t prove I’m _not_ something!”  He relaxed his knife hand though and pulled the blade away from her skin.  The pressure on his side immediately eased and they were scrambling away from each other again.

Yu was watching with worried eyes, his blaster in hand.  Clearly he wasn’t willing to just shoot the girl, in spite of the huge darkening bruise on his chest.  Chivalric idiot.  Though being fair he might just be concerned about hitting Kiro.  The way they were moving didn’t exactly give his partner clear shooting angles.

“Let me taste your truth.”  Both ti-thak dropped to the decking.  Kiro straightened and dropped his flex blades, something that had Yu squeaking in protest.  But Yu had never seen two Ssulli doing diplomacy before, Kiro hadn’t exactly had a lot of opportunity to use those long ago lessons.

Kiro offered his hands out, right palm up and left palm down and waited.  The girl shifted into the mirroring stance and the fingers of both their hands interlaced.  She was shorter than he was, something of a novelty, and had eyes the same green as weathered copper.  The dark red hair was a warning, rare in his people, sometimes even considered unlucky.  Things must be different where she was from.

Their noses bumped and Kiro tipped his head a little.  He ignored Yu’s strangled noise of protest and kissed the girl back.  Ritual, pure and simple, but she tasted sweet, even over the faint burn of her venom.  The kiss broke and Kiro tipped his chin up to let her have access to his throat, the barest of pinpricks tickled his skin then he was nuzzling the soft skin under her jaw in return.

The taste was just as sweet and set his body humming.

“Mei!” Squawked an unfamiliar voice and Kiro was moving to plant himself in the way before his brain caught up.

“Chai,” Kiro blinked up at the tall human with the red and black hair.  Why did humans have to be so tall all the time anyway?

“Why are you kissing a pirate Mei?” The tall man asked as he warily pointed something that looked vaguely like a staff in Kiro’s direction.

“He’s not a pirate.”  Kiro couldn’t stop the little smirk that escaped onto his face at the look of extreme doubt on the tall humans face.

“He’s not a pirate, ri~iight.  Mei, how do you know that?” The hiss of annoyance out of the girl had Kiro giggling.  She hissed at him for being an idiot, so he chirped right back at her, relief making him a bit giddy.

“Uh, Kiro?” asked Yu hesitantly, Kiro turned to look back at his crew mate.  The look on his face mirrored the strange mans, puzzlement and confusion.  “What’s with the snake bird thing?”

Kiro heard the other man gargle ‘snake bird thing’ in shock and had to stomp on another set of giggles.

“~_They don’t understand you?_~” she hissed at him sounding and looking shocked.  Kiro giggled and shook his head ‘no’. The look on her face and the way she threw her hands up in disgust had Kiro’s knees buckling as he hit the decking laughing like a lunatic.

Her next word was in Basic, and laden with a level of disgust he only ever heard from women after their men had just done something spectacularly stupid.

“**_Men_**.”

“Uh, Mei?”

“Yes Chai?”

“You’re kind of outnumbered, you’re the only girl.”  The indignant look had Kiro laughing harder.

“I am **not** outnumbered.  Andromeda is also a ‘girl’.”  She gathered up her ti-thak and Kiro’s flex blades.  She passed them over with an oddly formal little bow and Kiro stifled his giggles enough that he could rise to accept them and bow back.

Yu’s blaster was pointed at the floor, but quickly came back up and pointed down the hall when they heard the heavy clomp of boots on the deck, and from the sound of things it was someone moving at a dead sprint.

~0~

Shin panted and wished he’d had a better plan than shoot the Nightsider and run like hell.  At least he’d been able to get the pirates off the poor tech guy.  With a bit of luck Dorian had swept in after him and picked up the poor thing.  Being forced to hack systems when someone had your lover at gun point just couldn’t be pleasant.

And poor Rommie was dealing with multiple hackers, so she kind of had her mental hands full at the moment.  Whoever had set up the worm program in her systems was **_good_**.  If they hadn’t had so many internal defense systems locked down it wouldn’t be an issue, but bringing those systems back on line was going to take time.  And time was the one thing they didn’t have just now.

Shin took the next left and barreled past Mei and Chai and a little person he _didn’t_ know with two toned hair before he could stop.  He expected to hear the sound of Chai’s force lance, but heard the sharper and more distinct sound of an overpowered blaster letting off three shots.  When he got oriented correctly again he saw Mei standing over one of his fallen pursuers with a studiously blank look on her face and blood on her hands.

He blinked, when had Mei bleached her hair white?    Then he saw the more familiar fall of dark red and had his eyes ping-ponging back and forth for what felt like forever.  There was another Caili-Ssulli on board, and he, she; Shin shook his head and cursed all four Caili-Ssullian gender nominatives in his head as he panted to catch his breath.

How many pirates were on board anyway?  And how the _hell_ had they found one that looked as like Mei as a twin?  Well, other than the hair thing.

“Captain?”  Mei was staring intently at him.

“**_That’s_ **_your captain_?!” blurted a strange voice and Shin was back on his feet between Mei and the tall stranger.  For a brief irreverent moment he wondered if the man shared a hairdresser program with Chai.  His hair was black with red streaks dyed in, just like Chai’s, but unlike Chai’s it wasn’t a sleek fall to his waist, more a shaggy tumble to just past his shoulders.

And he had more piercings.  Chai just had his ears and the one loop in the center of his lip denoting he had sired children on his home world.  This man had multiple holes in each ear, a hoop in one eyebrow another in one nostril and three hoops in his lower lip, one in the center with the others at the corners.  He was thinner than Chai, and more angular, but from what he could see of the man’s arms was just as fond of body ink.

More critically he held what had to be the overpowered blaster in his hand.

“You are well?” Mei was ignoring the strangers; he’d have to learn why, in a moment when he could breathe properly again.

“Yeah, winded is all.” He panted out as he unsteadily walked over to the three fallen pirates.  All dead, he noted with a pained wince, blasters hits to the chest followed up with neat slices across the throat.  Shin looked around more carefully and blanched at the blacking form of another man in the same coarse leathers as the three dead men.  Someone had tried to hurt Mei and discovered the hard way that little didn’t mean harmless. He hadn’t liked Chai’s plan but it looked like it worked.  Shin shuddered, what a gruesome way to die.

He watched as Mei rummaged in the little bag she always carried and walked over to hiss something at the other Ssulli, who promptly removed his shirt.  Shin blinked, at least he thought a flat and smoothly muscled chest meant male in Mei’s species.  He had a small puncture just under his ribs on one side and after a hissed and clicked bit of conversation that he understood at best five words of Mei was covering the small wound with a bit of sticking plaster.

“Are you hostages too?”  The taller man gave him a blank look before answering.

“Hostages?  No, we’re part of the Maru-ka, shipping and salvage.”

Shin groaned; this was getting complicated, hostages, pirates and now a salvage crew?  Suddenly having to go to school seemed like such a trivial thing.

~0~

Andromeda wanted to laugh, very, _very_ badly.  She had known Harper had had children, she never expected that one of them would grace her decks in almost the same circumstances as his many times over great-grandfather.  Jan even _looked_ like Harper, wildly spiked blond hair and storm blue eyes.  He was a bit slimmer than his forefather, but was just as deceptively strong.

She was starting out by treating one of her new passengers medically, just like before.  Mei was shaky but knew her way around medical well enough to help David find everything he needed. Andromeda resolved to keep an eye on the botanist, in case her tremors weren’t just a bit of delayed shock, but David didn’t appear to be concerned.

The slender Callistan was beside himself with glee after seeing her facilities and had settled in to manufacture a pristine version of the treatment Jan and Linke had found for their friend’s immune disorder.  She couldn’t fathom why the medical authorities they claimed to have taken him to hadn’t fixed things properly before things had gotten so out of hand.  Even with the virus attacking his system having been tailored it should have been a simple thing to unravel.

That the poor thing had been left to suffer slowly was infuriating and unconscionable.

But with five or six treatments and some infusions of self sustaining nanobots he’d be fine.

Rommie watched Strify hover, from the looks of things it wasn’t his crew mates who had left this man in pain.  They had done everything they could.

She’d done some quick and dirty scans right after she realized Jan was a Harper.  Strify was a Valentine, Romeo was a descendant of Tyr Anasazi and by bizarre fluke Kiro was very distantly related to Mei Ling.  Even more amusing Linke was a descendant of both Harper and Bekka.  It defied belief, statistics and sanity; but somehow a crew very like the original one that had salvaged her before had assembled.

It was impossible.

She had the decedents of her original rescue crew aboard. 

Rommie made a quick note to monitor Shin-yavi’s sleep.  Right now he was behaving like any experienced Lancer after a fight, tired and unhappy but basically alright.  Shin wasn’t a Lancer; he was a civilian, a child, more critically a child who had never killed before.  An inordinate fondness for horror and gore movies aside he should be having either a bit of a breakdown or nightmares.

Chai and Dorian were both keeping a close eye on Shin as well she noted, and past experience told her she’d be well off to leave the matter in the two men’s capable hands.  Between them they’d gotten dozens of rookie Lancers past the shakes of their first fight.

~0~

Mei shivered and curled into a tight ball ignoring the garden she’d been restoring in favor of gripping her arms and shuddering from an elusive chill.  Her teeth ached, smells that had never bothered her before now made her feel ill.  If she wasn’t hot she was cold and under it all she was terrified.

She’d bitten someone, her teachers had been painfully explicit biting another sentient was taboo.  They’d never said **why**.

Mei was so focused on trying to control her body that she didn’t hear soft footfalls coming closer.

“Mei?”

Her eyes snapped open and she recoiled from the soft gray eyes of one of the salvage crew.  Yu blinked down at her but didn’t stop reaching for her.  He smelled good, sweet and rich and she didn’t understand why.  She fought with the desire to pounce the taller man, to touch and caress and to bite.

“Yu, you find her?”

Kiro, Mei whimpered and tried to writhe away from Yu gentle hands.  She ached, was to hot, to cold, needed to bite.  She couldn’t bite, it was wrong, not crew. She’d been able to rationalize the necessity of biting enemies, but not crew.  Mei thrashed weakly in Yu’s arms and let out a keening cry that had the taller human wrapping her tighter in his arms as he stared down in worry.

~0~

Kiro scrambled at the sound of Mei’s cry of hurt and need.  He knew that sound, hells he’d **made** that noise more than once.  Blood hunger.  How the hell she’d gotten to adulthood without feeding was beyond him, but he’d asked some rather pointed questions after he’d seen her getting shaky.  Chai and Dorian just gave him blank looks.  Shin had looked lost but had eventually said Mei had never bit him, nor had she ever said anything about her people needing blood.  Kiro had sat down with the AI and come away thoroughly disgusted.

The Calli-aliel idiocy apparently went back quite a ways; he’d suspected something odd with Mei being a naish-da.  On his home world female morph neuters were kept as matriarchal guards and watched over the crèche, you just didn’t see them out in the greater universe.  Male neuters tended to get sold or traded to other families as did a few full males like himself and full females ran everything.

The Calli-aliel idiots exposed female morph neuters at birth and believed blood rites were barbaric.  Kiro let out a rude noise as he dropped to his knees beside Yu as the taller man held a thrashing Mei still.

A vegetarian Lycan was just as idiotic.  They didn’t _need_ all that much blood, but the bites served more than for feeding.  Bites bound family and mates closer together.  Kiro bit his crew mates regularly both to bind them more closely together and as a way to help inoculate them against his more toxic bites.

From the pale and streaky look of Mei’s gums she was half starved.  Kiro snuggled down beside her and nuzzled his nose into her hair, putting his throat in range of her teeth.  He hissed in frustration when she pushed at him and tried to turn her face away.  The little cries of denial just made his irritation simmer higher.

Fucking religious fanatics.

Kiro fisted his hand tight into Mei’s hair and forced her face into his throat.  She tried resisting but with his skin millimeters from her lips she couldn’t fight for long and eventually bit with a tiny whimper.

He couldn’t stop his grunt of reaction and Yu’s hissed questions as to if he was alright and what in space was going on got ignored in favor of the pleasant burn connecting the bite on his neck to his groin.  Yu lost his grip on them and they all tumbled into a heap on the dirt path of the garden, Kiro and Yu bracketing a trembling Mei.

Kiro took advantage of their involuntary shift of positions to rock into Mei’s hip.  She gasped in reaction and bit him again, harder, on the shoulder.  Kiro growled; that was less a kin bite and more a mate bite.  He could work with that, if Yu would go along.  Kiro groped for the lapel of Yu’s vest and shoved to back over the tall humans shoulder.

He should go along with things, this was basically his idea.

Yu let out a puzzled noise but willingly shed the vest and pulled the shirt under it up and over his head without prompting.  Kiro swore at the fastenings of Mei jacket but eventually the latches gave and he was shoving the green synth leather back over her shoulders.  The soft white cloth of her undershirt he just ripped in frustration, he wanted skin contact and he wanted it now.

Mei groped for skin and Kiro was more than happy to oblige as he tore the remains of his own shirt off.  He knew what this was; blood fever, he’d felt it before.  He heard Yu gulp and a soft and fervent ‘oh fuck’ and knew his friend and lover had put the pieces together.  He didn’t leave though, he shifted away long enough to strip down to the tight black briefs he wore under his ship leathers and was back plastered to Mei’s back.  Tacit acceptance of the fact his shoulder was going to get chewed again.

Hesitant touches to his cock had him giving up thinking as a bad idea and just going with the flow of his feelings.

Outside the garden Chai stared at the closed and locked door and wondered why in space Rommie had invoked a privacy lock on a public space.

~0~

Dorian stroked Shin’s hair and rocked the taller and slimmer young man in his arms.  Softly he sang one of the lullabies he’d learned from Chai’s wives an eternity ago on a bit of leave.  Dorian smiled fondly at the memory.  He and Chai had been partners for just over a year at that point and Dorian had been terribly curious about his friend’s culture.

Tulorrian’s were human, but had an odd little quirk or two.  Only males served with the Commonwealth, specifically males who had sired at least three children.  Dorian had been surprised; Chai was only a standard year or two older than him.  But when he’d taken his friend up on his invitation to spend some leave time with him he’d learned how it was possible.

Chai had four wives, two were identical twins.  Dorian had stared in shock when the cluster of very pretty women had come out of the sprawling compound that belonged to the Deveraux clan and had only just barely made it through introductions.

Then he’d grilled his friend on why he hadn’t been warned that Chai was a polygamist.  Learning that it was normal on Tuloræ hadn’t helped much.  Then he’d learned some other things.  Two of Chai’s wives were arranged, had been arranged when they were children, the twins he’d married for love.  On Tuloræ identical twins were treated as one person, where one went the other went, either could sign legal documents for both and any man or woman who had twins as spouses was looked on with extraordinary favor.

It had made his head hurt.

Then he’d met Chai’s children.

He’d been sunk then, the eldest was five, the youngest conceived during Chai’s last leave just over a year before and still nursing. Dorian had stared into the baby girls eyes and been captivated.

That night he’d curled up in a bed with Chai and they had talked.

They’d kissed for the first time that night.  Dorian had freaked out a little the next morning and had hidden himself in a corner of the gardens.

The oldest of Chai’s wives had cornered him and before Dorian had been able to blurt out apologies Olivia had let him in on another oddity of Tulorrian culture.

When they’d been assigned together they’d had a good laugh over the fluke of chance that had them having an identical last name.  Dorian was Olsteraan, from the other side of the galaxy, as far as you could get and be in the same galaxy from Tuloræ.  Because of that little quirk and the fact they were assigned as partners Dorian had the same legal standing on Tuloræ as any of Chai’s wives.

When he’d gotten over that shock he’d shouted at Chai about having a crappy way of asking a man out.  On Olsteraa there were forms to be followed, steps to go through before marriage and Chai had skipped over every last blessed one.  That several _couldn’t_ be done because he had no other living family wasn’t relevant.

He’d meant it as a joke.  Chai had taken it very seriously.

Dorian rubbed his cheek over Shin’s soft blond hair and stared down at the heavy band on his right wrist.

Chai had presented him with the band only days before they’d kissed their wives and children goodbye before this trip.

On Dorian’s home world it was the mark of a married man.

He wondered about the ones they’d left behind.  Would Aella have married Sarin like they’d arranged?  Had Mealla and Talla been pregnant?  Ten years of partnership, nine of settling into being part of a group marriage, wives, children, family like he’d never had before.  It was all gone, all but Chai.

He was grateful that Shin was asleep and didn’t see the tears that leaked out of his eyes to be blotted away in Shin’s soft hair.

~0~

Linke kept his fidgets down by pacing the halls and corridors of the great ship.  They were being tolerated at the moment by the ship’s AI, at least until she figured out what she needed to do to get what was left of her crew back home.

If they still had a home to go back to.

He’d done a bit of research; the people this ship had been going to talk with had been very disinclined to diplomacy.  Not to put too fine a point on it they’d had their delegation act as suicide bombers and saboteurs.  From the papers he’d been able to hack into the ship had had a large portion of her own internal defenses locked down in response to demands by the loonies she’d been sent to try and entice into the Commonwealth.

As far as he knew Argelians were still independent, telling the Alliance and the Commonwealth to **both** go fuck themselves.  Not that they didn’t have people who were more than happy to prey on both empires.  The main collective was more than happy to tax the crap out of anyone passing through their space, and those taxes _didn’t_ protect you from ‘rogue elements’.  Linke snorted.  Tax the fuck out of folks then let your buddies rob them of what was left.  It was a neat little racket they had going.  He was glad Strify and Rom both felt the extra two weeks of travel time was worth not dealing with the leeches, even if it did plant you square in Reaver territory.  With David’s little talents they’d never had a problem with the menaces.

The Commonwealth had listed the ship as lost, had picked up what crew they could and kited off on their merry little empire building way.

There was no telling what they’d do when they found out that oh yeah that lost ship?  Yeah **that** one, she’s back and a bit pissy about being dumped a second time after all that work picking up their first mess.

He saw Chai staring at a door that his mental map of the ship told him lead into one of the ships gardens with a look of puzzlement on his narrow face.

“Problems?”  Linke was being determinedly friendly, mostly because the other Lancer had been charming and done his best to make them feel comfortable in spite of how they’d met.  This one was a bit more of an enigma.

The tall man turned and idly tucked a strand of bi colored hair behind his ear.  Linke now knew the red streaks were symbolic just like the ring in the center of his lower lip, and not simple personal adornments like Yu’s piercings.  The ships AI had dumped him out of the public sections of the personnel records only thirty hours ago, but not before he’d learned a number of interesting things.

“Andromeda put a privacy lock up.”

“Vegetables need their space too, how else do baby vegetables come into being?”  Linke was being facetious and from the flicker of exasperation on Chai’s face the Lancer realized that. But as he teased Linke used his wireless port to access the tapes of the corridor for the last hour or so.

Yu and Kiro had gone in that door only half an hour ago.  Linke grinned and took the slimmer man’s elbow and herded him away from the door.

“You don’t want to go in there anyway.”

Chai planted his boots and leveled a stare at Linke that he was probably used to cowing people with.  Linke was too used to Timo in a rage and Romeo and Strify in a snit for it to have any impact at all.

“I don’t.  **_Really_**.  I was under the impression I did want to go in there.”

Linke smirked; this was going to be so much fun.

“Unless you’re into Ssullian sex practices I’d say probably not.”

The expressions that flashed over the other mans narrow features was worth at least a weeks worth of data time, but his voice was level and his words calm.

“Excuse me?”

“Ssullian sex practices.  Kiro and Yu are in there and I’d say they’re ah…” Linke paused to search for the right word, “fertilizing a bit of your gardens.”

Chai’s eyes closed and the lean man couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that escaped.  Linke grinned; his point clearly had been made.

“I don’t think I want to know what your pilot and engineer get up to alone.”

Linke’s grin went wicked and he teased again.

“Probably the same sorts of things you and Dorian get up to behind closed doors, minus the biting and blood play anyway.”

Chai’s ears flushed red and his face briefly went pained before settling into a more wryly amused expression.

“Now I _really_ don’t want to know.”

“I told you that,” Linke responded feeling rather smug.  “We got anything edible on this boat?  I’m starved…”

Chai sighed but led the way to the officer’s mess.

~0~

Food here was very good Yu mused.  They had gardens, as in **real** gardens, they had hydroponics like the larger Alliance warships just on a grander scale. They had the usual vats for all sorts of things.  Yeast vats with addition of soy could turn out some very good substitutes for things Yu had only tasted a few times in his life.

They had live fish living in huge tanks as part of their waste reclamation system.  He’d never had salmon before and had to admit he was rather partial now, especially with the fresh citrus and crisp greens and steamed golden rice going with it that apparently were Mei’s contribution to lunch.

Chai just gave him a bemused look as he savored every morsel. He flushed slightly and looked away when Kiro and Mei came in and snuggled close up to Yu’s sides.  The Lancer was openly affectionate with his partner and Dorian was just as snuggly back but something about seeing Yu being snuggled by one of his old shipmates seemed to make the man go obscurely bashful.

Yu finished his meal, but not after offering bites to his lovers and learning that both had already eaten.  Then he stopped and really looked at both of them.  Mei and Kiro shared a body type, small, lean and graceful.  Their facial features were eerily similar with Kiro having a more snubbed nose and Mei a more pointed chin but something had changed.

“You let Strify at you with scissors didn’t you?”  Mei’s hair was even again, or more properly was uniformly layered now.  Kiro gave him one of his almost triangular grins and winked.  Yu blinked, Kiro had red hair.  He reached out and stroked his fingers through it thoughtfully.

“You been playing with your nanobots again?” Back when Kiro had been a new foundling Strify had dosed him with the nanobots he used in his hair to help him change his appearance.  Yu was familiar with them; he and Luminor had them as well, courtesy of Strify’s family creating a strain of robust self replicating nanobots.  Every few months they would each harvest off the extra ‘bots and stopper them up in vials.  Strify knew how to disable the part of their code to make them self replicate and in the past had sometimes had to sell off vials to supplement their income.  Now he still occasionally sold vials of ‘sterile’ nanobots but it was more for luxuries than necessities now.

Yu felt a prickle of premonition when Mei and Kiro grinned at each other and both shook their heads hard.  As he watched their hair shifted color and spiked up so that when they stopped they both were wearing a variation on Kiro’s usual two toned style.  The major difference was Kiro’s hair was still just past his shoulder blades where Mei’s fell past her hips.

It was pretty clear to Yu that Mei was looking to him for approval, even as Chai looked faintly shocked.  He smiled softly and cuddled them both to him nuzzling his nose into first one then the others hair.

“I like it.”  He knew his own hair was spiking up and the faded red streaks were brightening up.  He couldn’t help it, when he got happy his hair reacted.  Any other time he had almost one hundred percent control of his nanobots, but not when he was happy and not when he was around Kiro.

“Are we having a hedgehog convention?”  The voice was soft and sounded tired. Yu let go of his lovers and turned to see a very worn looking Shin-yavi.  The teen waved a hand at Chai to get the Lancer to relax again. “Relax Chai, I’m, a place holder, until the Commonwealth gets back to us anyway.”

Chai let Shin have his chair and went to get another mug of coffee as he asked.

“You got through then?”

Shin nodded and gratefully accepted the full mug.  Mei nuzzled under Yu’s jaw then slid away to fix a plate of food.

“I had to deal with a bureaucrat. But I think I convinced him I was genuine, Rommie did more for that I think than I did.”

“He was being needlessly obstructionist, you had the proper codes and none of them have been released or re-used.  And you couldn’t have gotten them from me.  Andromeda’s voice sounded faintly annoyed.  “If they want me back they have to deal with you _properly_.”

Yu had to smile at the way the ship was acting like a protective mother hen over her captain.  He’d gathered that Shin-yavi wasn’t a usual choice, but that something odd had occurred and how he was it.  If it was a matter of most qualified he thought it would have been Chai, but Chai deferred to the younger man almost by instinct.

Shin-yavi was the captain, the captain gets obeyed.  At least in public anyway, Yu had no idea if the dynamic shifted when it was just the two of them.

Mei set a filled plate in from of Shin and after a bit of prompting the young man began clearing it.  Kiro shifted a bit and tugged Mei between him and Yu and snuggled in again. Yu smiled faintly down at his lovers, Kiro so quietly calm and almost cocky and Mei so tentative not sure of her place, needing contact but almost afraid of being clingy.

Yu remembered Kiro in his clingy phase after he’d had his bout of blood hunger.  He’d inadvertently bound them together.  If they’d gone their separate ways it would have faded quickly, but living in each others pockets like they did it had grown. It had evolved from a simple meeting of a biological need into friendship and from there to real love and a true partnership.  Kiro might feed from others but he took his spiritual nourishment from his ship mates and his joy from Yu.

When he’d mentioned Mei was in the same state he’d been in Yu had wondered why her shipmates didn’t step in.  If she’d gotten separated from her sesstri there should have been something they could have done.

Then Kiro had learned from Linke’s snooping that she _didn’t have_ a sesstri.  She’d been solitary, and he’d been sickened.  Yu had been treated to the rare sight of his lover in a full scale snit, ranting and screaming about religious fanatics and idiocy for a good three hours before he’d finally tired and stopped to let Yu cuddle him again.

It had been Yu’s idea to step in.  He’d had no idea what he was getting into and only time would tell if they’d settle into a stable three.  At times Yu felt like an outsider as the two Ssulli seemed to fall neatly together, but he’d seen some interesting stumbles.  Mei’s version of Ssulli manners was older, more formal and old fashioned, almost archaic to Kiro’s more relaxed versions.  Sometimes Kiro would be inviting contact and Mei would miss it, or simply misinterpret, and her invitations were occasionally interpreted as something else entirely.

Not that Yu was complaining about the sex, it just was odd sleeping with two people who hissed and chirped at each other.  He was getting a quick and dirty understanding of their language though, even if when he tried to speak it he sent both his lovers into fits of giggles.

Then again it would make up for him and Lumi talking Mandreena and Kiro being the one giggled at.  Yu smiled at the memory.  Kiro had repeated something Lumi had said in a low voiced grumble about an ill mannered client and Yu had almost swallowed his tongue.  Some how Kiro had mangled the pronunciation just right for his words to come out ‘I want you to fuck me’ rather than repeating Lumi’s plaint of ‘he just wanted to fuck me’.

Luminor goggling and falling over laughing probably hadn’t helped, but it had improved his mood.

Yu had been more than happy to fulfill the request.

“What are you grinning at?”

Yu grinned wickedly down at Kiro and noted Mei was watching him curiously as well.

“Sex.”  His grin went a touch evil when Chai yelped and ordered.

“No sex in the kitchen!”

Shin-yavi just blinked and shook his head.

“I had no idea being a ship captain was this much… I dunno, mommying?”

Chai groaned as Yu laughed.

~0~

“We got incoming.” Yu shouted as he ran down the corridor away from the hanger where the Maru-ka ad Serenity were kept and toward the rebuilt bridge.

Shin blinked and took off after him leaving Chai to swear and turn toward the hanger with the fighters in it.

Dorian blinked, looked right after his captain and then turned and sprinted left after Chai.  He blinked in shock when he saw Kiro pelting across the deck toward another fighter, but didn’t even try to dissuade the smaller man.  Chai was flight leader; he could argue it out with the stubborn Ssulli.

He strapped in and kicked his engines to life.  He pulled his helmet on and plugged in his life support as everything else came on line.  Less than a minute later Dorian was taking up his accustomed position to the left of Chai’s fighter.  To his amusement and Chai’s seething irritation Kiro took to top center position, the back of the V as they mock strafed the incoming ship to get her attention.

The burst of savage swearing out of Chai when Kiro had flipped his fighter around and gone back for another close in pass had him trying vainly to stifle his laughter.  Chai was used to be the top pilot, but Kiro flew like he _was_ the fighter and it was pissing Chai off to no end.

“Fine, but no more fancy shit,” snarled Chai as Dorian fought down his giggles.  “Bite as many as you can and if that doesn’t work get the fuck back out.”

“Rommie tailored things.”

“I know that,” Chai was seething.  “I watched Romeo and Timo fight it and had to listen to them bitch about the hangover yesterday.  Get in, Get out.”

“Yo-ho, yo-ho, yo-ho,” quipped Kiro and Dorian had to toggle his mic off to keep from openly laughing at his partner.

“**Cullen**!”

“Aye-aye, no mucking about,”

The strangled noise out of Chai had Dorian all but crying in laughter, but then a pained sigh signaled that the other pilot had seen the humor of the words.

“Just don’t get dead.”

That got a serious answer as Kiro daintily set his fighter on one of the other ships coupling hatches.

“Not planning on it.”

“Incoming,” Chai warned.

Dorian toggled his mic back on.

“Should be them calling, I’ll be careful and keep my ears open.”

Dorian knew Chai would be setting his faceplate to mirror the cockpit as he answered.

“You are in restricted space, identify or we will blow you to dust.”  Just like Chai to go hard line right off.

“This is Samuel Anasazi of the ship Calypso; I am tracking the ship Serenity.”

“Why?”

Dorian blinked.  Interesting, they hadn’t expected their little band of misfits to have people looking for them.  And clearly people with resources from the look of the ship hanging in space below them.  She was a pretty thing and looked like a larger version of the old seta class Firefly.  She was easily half again bigger than Serenity which according to Romeo was a delta class Firefly.

“I need to ask my brother a question.”

Dorian blinked again.  It must be a humdinger of a question to come out all this way just to ask it.

He listened as Chai was as civilly obstructionist as humanly possible and the other man tried to find different ways to ask the same question.  He wanted to talk face to face with Romeo.  Chai kept offering to relay but the Nietzschian kept refusing saying he had to see his brother in person.

Then he grinned as the other ship’s security system finally realized it had a passenger.  He snickered as the ruffled and clearly frustrated blond Nietzschian swore and bolted off the bridge in search of his boarder.

“You think Kiro’s okay?”

“Probably, I delayed the one for almost two minutes, and Kiro’s a fast little shit.  Andromeda?” he asked the ship, “How many life signs aboard?”

A voice slowly growing familiar answered, Luminor.

“Seven, Kiro’s life sign just left one of the targets, there are only two moving around other than him now.”  There was a long pause.  “Chai we do know this man, he’s one of Romeo’s half brothers.”

Chai let out a low growl.

“Really, so he wasn’t blowing smoke?” Dorian asked the question he knew Chai wanted answered.

“Not on that at least.  But we saw him about a year ago, he didn’t indicate anything of importance had come up then and he has our com codes.”

“So why didn’t he just call you?”

That, Dorian reflected, was the ten million throne question.  Even with communication being a bit odd out here on the fringes there were still relay beacons.  It might take six months for a signal to bounce its way from one end of the galaxy to the other but it would get there.  And a Slipstream courier was faster, how fast depended on how much you wanted to spend, but in theory you could get a message across the galaxy in three weeks.

“I don’t know.  Romeo thinks it might be he does in fact need to show us something, something he doesn’t think we’ll believe over video.  Ah Kiro just got another one, but he’s fallen back to let the last one drag his partner back to where most of the other life sparks are.”

Dorian wondered how the other man visualized things, it had to be interesting from the way he described things.  The man would have made a phenomenal tactical support man in the Commonwealth.  Then Kiro’s voice rang clear.

“I have the comm and am coming in.”

~0~ _Flashing back to Chai talking to Sammy_ ~0~

Sammy sighed and raked his hands through his hair, yanking his head scarf off in the process.  Then he glared at the blank face plate of the helmeted man on his screen as he tried to find another way to ask the same question, **_again_**.  He’d tracked Serenity this far and come out of slipstream to find his ship under the guns of a very big warship.

His first instinct was to run, but he managed to squash that reaction.  There was no way in space his Epsilon was going to be able to turn and hit a jump point before he was gunned down, no matter how fast Calypso’s new engines were. Then he got mock strafed by three fighters and realized he was well and truly fucked.  The center pilot was either insane or very, **very** skilled.  He’d flipped around and come right back at Calypso, passing meters in front of his front screens,  sheer shock had held Sammy’s hands steady on the controls.  A flinch at the helm with two ships that close together could have been fatal for both of them.  The stunt had him letting out a very embarrassing shriek, thank the ancestors that no one had come to see what he was making a racket over.  Juke would have teased him for _months_.

He’d opened a com line and tried diplomacy and gotten this faceless grunt with no sense of humor and no desire to cooperate at all.  Faceless literally because the man was wearing a helmet with a faceplate that was reflecting his controls and the inside of his canopy.  The bastard had probably deliberately set his faceplate that way to be more intimidating.  Knowing that it was just a tactic didn’t mean the tactic didn’t still _work_.  Sammy was an artist, not a mercenary, but it still irritated the daylights out of him that such a simple thing should make him twitch so much.

“Fine, land a pilot on my ship then.  I just want to find my little brother and ask a question.” This was frustrating; he didn’t understand how Marissa dealt with this kind of idiocy on a daily basis.  He ignored the fact that his older sister had more patience than he did and loved the intricacies of politics.

“So ask, we can relay.”

Sammy glared at the blank mask; they’d been through this before.  He hissed out a sigh between clenched teeth and tried to get his arm spines to lay flat.  Hard to show Romeo anything when the marks he wanted to show him were on the shoulders and arms of the three men he and Juke had found adrift in cyro-sleep almost eleven months ago.  Just shots of the ink wouldn’t convince Rom of anything.

“I have to show it to him.” Preferably show _them_ to him alive when he can do the math himself Sammy continued in his head.  He snapped his teeth shut on that thought and tried to find a way to explain without explaining he had three people that might be known to Yu, Luminor and Franky.

He didn’t get the chance to continue as his ships security system began loudly informing him that something was wrong.  Sammy scanned his console and swore.

He’d been breached almost two full minutes ago and the system was only **now** informing him of the fact. He turned away from his screens and took off at a near sprint toward the top hatch.  After two minutes it was far too late, but he had to start _somewhere_.

Sammy heard Juke yelp and the sound of something solid hitting the decking.  His heart froze as he spun to move that direction.  Carefully he scanned the corridors, his sidearm up and ready.

Nothing, nothing, oh ancestors, Juke!

Sammy was on his knees beside his lover in an instant. Julian was still breathing, but his movements were clumsy, uncoordinated and nothing like his normal gawky grace.  He had a seeping bite mark on his throat, right where neck and shoulder joined; Sammy could clearly see the marks of double canines and secondary needle teeth.  He’d been taken from behind by a Ssulli, and apparently one who didn’t want them dead.

Sammy spared a breath to be grateful as he scooped his lover up into his arms and headed back toward the infirmary at a clumsy run.

To his dismay Theon was already there, a bit wild eyed and armed with that blasted projectile pistol of his.  Vivian and Jason were already in two of the three cots.  Sammy swore at the sight of nearly identical bite marks, bitten from the front it looked like, on the two men’s throats.  Thankfully both were breathing and looked to be sleeping.

“Boarded.”  Theon shot wary glances out the door behind Sammy.  The man was sticking to simple words, but the thickness of his accent told Sammy he was seriously freaked out over something.

“Yeah, I know.”  He shifted Julian into the last cot and stroked a bit of soft black hair away from his lovers face.  He looked like he was sleeping, that meant a paralytic, something that with a bit of luck their nanobots could clear out quickly.

Theon was agitated enough that he wasn’t keeping a good hold on his limited Basic and was trying to communicate something about their boarder in the odd musical gabble that apparently was his native tongue.  Xavier had said it sounded like the Alliance’s version of Basic.  Sammy wished it was closer to theirs.  This was **not** the time for language lessons.

With Juke safely settled Sammy rechecked his blaster and gave Theon a nod.  Wherever they’d come from Theon, Vivian and Jason had been very well trained.  Theon might not like it much but he fell in neatly with Sammy as they moved covering each other as they moved to try and find their boarder.

Training would tell; Theon moved easily covering Sammy’s back as they got to the nearest security console.  Theon’s blue eyes roved over the corridors, decking, walls and ceiling for any sight of anything strange as Sammy typed in his request.

“The hells?”

Theon hissed something that Sammy interpreted as a question.

“There’s only one.”

Theon’s shoulder dropped as the blond turned to look at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Duh! Hi Sammy!” chirped a familiar voice and battle ready or not Sammy’s arms came up to catch the warm little body that flung itself at him.

Kiro.  Warm, pliant Kiro.  Sammy tried to get his brain to work around the lovely haze that kissing Kiro was inducing, he had both hands full of pert little ass and was trying to get his brain to make sense of the impossible.  He didn’t work quite fast enough; he made the mistake of letting his head roll back under Kiro’s ministrations and felt the sharp stab of Kiro’s teeth.

Sammy slid down the bulkhead as his knees came unstrung and could only watch numbly as Theon shook himself into action a bare second too late.  Kiro pounced him and kissed him. An effective tactic he had to admit, Theon’s gun went skittering over the deck.

Theon did better than he did though and was able to pitch Kiro across the corridor and grab Sammy’s fallen blaster.  But by the time he brought it up and around Kiro wasn’t there for him to shoot at.  The little Ssulli was inhumanly fast.

“What? That? **_What_**?”  Sammy couldn’t stop the giggle at Theon’s reaction.  He’d only understood those few words but the shell shocked look on Theon’s narrow face was good for a thousand words.  Theon took one look at the bleeding wound on Sammy’s neck and was dragging him bodily back to medical.

Sammy tried to hang on to consciousness as his pounding heartbeat spread the bites effects around his body.  Kiro had used his paralytic and clearly the little bastard had tailored it.  He’d have to have a stern talking to with his little brother.  He giggled weakly, he felt drunk, or high, not something he was used to.

Theon slapped him hard and gave him a shake.  Clearly the human was more than a bit stressed about this mess.

“You, Need what?  Sammy!”

Sammy made his mouth work around the gathering fog in his mind.  Thank the Progenitors that Chris had color coded everything.  Where was Chris?  Theon shook him again.

“Sammy!”

“Blue,” Sammy managed and Theo was up and moving rummaging with no care at all until he came up with a blue vial and a Hypo-spray. A little fumbling had the vial loaded and Theon was back on his knees beside Sammy.

“Sammy?” Theon clearly had no idea what to do next.  Sammy clumsily tried to adjust the dials to just unload half the vial but he was getting so tired.  Theon figured it out quickly though and Sammy sighed in relief at the cool sting of the hypo going in millimeters from the bite.

Theon clearly decided that being alone with one groggy Nietzschian wasn’t a good thing and shifted over to hit Julian with the other half of the nanos.  Probably a good idea.  He was talking to himself as he worked.

“Little… dangerous…”

Sammy had to laugh; his brain began slowly clearing the fog away and let his mouth work properly.  He still felt drunk, and his brain wasn’t filtering his words worth a damn.  He’d never felt this drunk before in his life.

“Of course he’s dangerous.  He’s little, and cute and looks completely harmless.  But he’s Kiro, and he bites that makes him really dangerous.”  Sammy managed to get out, grateful that Theon had picked up enough Basic in the last ten months to understand him.  He was even more grateful that Theon had been able to hit him with the supplemental dose of nanobots without too much fumbling to help clear Kiro’s lovely paralytic out of his system faster.  He _knew_ Kiro was dangerous, why the hell had the let the little menace close enough to **bite** him?  He ignored the fact that Kiro had essentially pounced him blindly, the same way he had the last three times he’d run into him.  Sammy also ignored the fact that his libido would have been more than happy to fuck the little Ssulli into the decking if he was given the chance.

Romeo was never going to let him live this down.  Worse Yu was going to be insufferably smug that his little lover had gotten the drop on him **_again_**.  Theon didn’t understand any of that though and just watched the door warily in case the tiny blond tried coming through it.

Sammy waited for the nanos to do their work, but felt a chill of premonition as the ship shifted direction. 

Kiro was a pilot.

~0~

“You are not flying that thing in by the seat of your pants.”  Chai growled in irritation, knowing that if Kiro wanted to there really wasn’t much he could do to stop him.  Worse Kiro was more than good enough to land that ship in Andromeda’s main bay with no fear of even jostling her contents.  The little bastard was good enough that if there had been dust on Andromeda’s decks he could land without disturbing it.

Dorian was laughing at him.  But Dorian was used to not being the top pilot in the division.

Chai silently vowed to pin his lover to a bed and make him beg for hours once they were back on board Andromeda.  Bad enough the little menace had joined them to make up a proper triad of fighters, worse he’d taken the center line of the ship for his strafing run, horrifying that after their first pass the little imp had pulled an insane twisting maneuver to go back head on and pass mere meters from the other ships front canopy… Kiro had probably scared the fuck out of the other pilot.

Kiro had scared the fuck out of _him _with that stunt.  More than likely he’d scared the fuck out of his lover as well.  At least if Yu yelled at him he’d listen, gods knew the little fuck didn’t listen to him.

Chai shifted back into left escort position as Dorian took the right and fumed a bit.  Kiro was like Mei, like _cats_, **both** of them.  Just like fucking cats, they’d look at you, blink and do whatever the hell they wanted to anyway. He ignored the part of his mind that said they were warm, cuddly and affectionate and unlike a cat, Mei and Kiro wouldn’t bite or claw him for no reason.  A Ssulli love bite really was a gesture of affection.

Chai sighed in faint relief when Kiro behaved and set the strange ship neatly in the center of the bay exactly on the line Andromeda had given him.  If the Nietzschian at the helm really was who he claimed to be and who Luminor thought he was they’d shift it over nearer to the Maru-ka and Serenity, but for now she needed to be isolated.  Shut down procedure took only a few moments and Chai was climbing out of his fighter and peeling his helmet off as he walked over to meet Dorian and head over to the lowering ramp and cycling hatch of their peculiar guest.  Idly he pulled his braided hair free of his suit to hang neatly down his spine.

Yu met them halfway and Chai blinked at the sight of Mei a half step behind the taller human.  He was still adjusting to the meek little botanist turning into a feisty little thing.  Chai was sure he’d never get used to seeing her with bi-colored hair that matched Kiro’s, bad enough their facial features were creepily similar, now they looked like twins.

Any protests he had died at the sight of the med kit pack.  She was the best excuse they had for a medic right now.  Well they had David, but Chai still wasn’t adjusted to the salvage crews being _crew_, not guests.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to them.

Shin was adapting, but Shin was a civilian, and younger.  Nine days and counting and Chai really hoped they’d get a positive answer from High Guard Command.  Chai tucked his helmet under his arm and squared his shoulders.

He still had Dorian.  Their wives and children were likely gone; their grandchildren had grandchildren of their own.  It hurt and he knew at some point he’d have to deal with it.

But not now.

He had a job to do right now.

Chai walked up the ramp and looked for Kiro.

~0~

Dorian frowned a little at Chai’s back, something was off.  He wondered if the realization that they were alone in the universe was starting to really sink in.  It had hit him fairly quickly.  He’d stared in shock at the data screen that reported the deaths of their wives, their oldest children, even a grandson and namesake he never knew he’d had and then collapsed in tears.  He’d had to look; he’d just had to check.

Everything he’d known was gone.  A blink in time, all gone.  The family he’d come to treasure lost to him again.

He’d come back to himself eyes sore, nose stuffed up and his throat raw from crying and talking being rocked in the arms of one of the salvage crew.  A frail but lovely man he’d learned was called Luminor.  Luminor had understood some of it; he told them how he, his brother and Franky had been on the far side of Alliance territory when they’d been set on by something called a Reaver.  Apparently some horrific kind of pirates and been separated from their shipmates.  Franky had driven them into a singularity point in purest desperation.

It was insane.

It had also worked and spat the three of them far, far away from their attackers.  At least he and Chai still could speak and be understood, for weeks Luminor, Yu and Franky hadn’t even had that as they’d had to learn a new language just to communicate basic needs.

If he’d been in Luminor’s boots he’d have probably thrown himself out an airlock.  Thank god he still had Chai.

“We still have a live one.”

Dorian jumped a little when Kiro popped up around a corner.

“Live?” The tone of Chai’s voice told Dorian he was taking Kiro a little too seriously.  The small Ssulli lifted both hands in acknowledgment.

“More like mobile.  I got five with the paralytic, but I don’t expect three of them to stay down long, they’re Nietzschian.”

“Noted.” Chai made a face, “what’s our bouncer like?”

“Human, tall, blond, jittery as fuck and trigger happy.”

Dorian groaned; this was going to be so much fun.  At least Andromeda had been able to tailor Kiro’s paralytic where it would take a while for standard Nietzschian nanos to clear it out.

~0~

Theon only understood a few words, tall, human, blond, fuck and trigger happy.  Not really anywhere near enough for him to know what the tiny little blond demon was saying to the taller men.  His heart was still hammering from when he’d first seen the tiny thing.

He’d been dreaming; a nice sweet dream of Viv kissing him when something had awakened him.  The person laying on him was too small, to light to be Vivian and he’d freaked out, shoving the smaller body off and grabbing for his gun as he spun off his bunk.  He’d gotten a glimpse of wheat blond hair and green eyes in a small pretty face and hadn’t recognized it before the small man had charged him.

His gun had gone clattering over the deck and he’d used both hands in a frantic hurry to keep the small man away from his throat. By pure luck he’d been able to throw the smaller man away from him again and get himself shut in a small room for long enough to rearm himself and try again to stop whoever it was from doing whatever it was they thought they was doing.

He’d checked on Viv and Jason and had almost panicked when he found both in their bunks with bloody bite marks on their throats.  Both had been breathing and other than the bites looked to be unharmed. But neither would wake.

Theon had hauled them both down the hall to the medical bay and settled them as best he could before he decided to try and find Christian, the medic.  He’d barely turned when Sammy was coming in with Julian in his arms looking just as rattled as he felt.  He rarely saw the lean Nietzschian without the black silk scarf covering and containing his soft blond flyaway hair, he’d seen it earlier and saw the other man’s arm spikes standing out away from his forearms in a way that made him uneasy.  Those bony bits weren’t just an odd mutation, they were personal weaponry.

They’d gotten to a security station and learned they had one invader to deal with.  Then the tiny blond had pounced again.  If he hadn’t been scared half silly it would have been funny to watch Sammy get pounced by the tiny thing.  He’d dropped his gun and cupped both of his attacker’s buttocks in his hands as the smaller man had kissed him half witless.  Then he’d followed up the kiss with a bite.

Then, too late, he registered the delicate looking armful was the threat and leveled his gun.  Fat lot of good it did him, the little thing had pounced him flat and sent his gun skittering across the decking.  The pounce and kiss tactic was clearly a favorite, and damned if it didn’t work.  Theon had barely been able to throw the small man off him a second time and grope for the nearest weapon before the little thing was gone again.

Sammy had been getting groggy already, and had been frighteningly giggly over the whole thing.  More frightening he’d **_known_** his attacker.  He’d _named_ him, Kiro, called him cute.  After a frantic dose of something from a blue stoppered vial he’d sobered up a little but was still far from steady or stable.

Now he watched as the little monster cheerfully talked to three tall men as a smaller woman who resembled him to a terrifying degree hovered in the background.  Was she related?  His sister?  They looked enough alike, or maybe it was just whatever he was they all looked similar to outsiders.  Theon didn’t think he’d ever get used to some of the species that roamed this side of the universe.  So many intelligent things that looked nothing like a human.  And a few, a terrifying few, who looked human but weren’t.

Theon gripped his gun a little tighter and took a breath preparing to face down these people.  He took the step around the corner and grabbed for the nearest body he could and hoped that he could get him secure before he got bitten.

He had one shot at this.  Viv and Jason were depending on him.

~0~

Kiro yelped in surprise as a strong arm wrapped over his throat and pulled him backwards into an equally solid chest.  He opened his mouth but then snapped it shut again at the cold hard feel of a blaster muzzle pressed to his temple.  It wasn’t like he was in a good position to bite the arm holding him anyway.

Dorian managed to grab Mei before she got more than a step or two past him; she was hissing her distress as she fought his hands.  His precious naish-da would only get them both shot if she wasn’t careful.  Dorian had his eyes on the gun even as he started softly soothing Mei; Kiro hissed a little trill at her to help.  Chai had dropped his helmet and had both hands up and away from his sides and looked to be organizing his thoughts to try and calm Kiro’s captor down.

“Theon?”

Kiro blinked, and tried to not fall as his captor pulled him backwards another step.  How the fuck did Yu know this guy?

“Yuki?” Kiro squinted up as best he could at the guy who was holding him.  He couldn’t understand a word the guy was saying and it was irritating the crap out of him.

Worse Yu was answering back in the same language and it _sounded_ like the same language he and Lumi sometimes used.  But the blaster shifted away from his head and the arm around his neck loosened and let him go.  Mei was at his side in an instant and Kiro took a moment to calm her back down.  They were newly bonded, and she wasn’t used to combat in spite of having been trained for it all her life and living on a warship.  And no amount of training could teach you what it felt like to have someone you cared about at gunpoint and be helpless to do anything about it.

Kiro blinked in confusion when Yu wasn’t there as well, and looked up at his tall lover in confusion.

His former captor was the tall blond guy he’d missed biting twice earlier.  Once he’d woken up and freaked, the second time he’d simply been lucky and fast when he’d caught Sammy off guard.

Yu was hugging the guy tight whispering a name over and over.  The guy was hugging back just as tight mumbling Yu’s name just as much.  Dorian looked confused and a bit embarrassed, Chai just looked resigned.

Jealousy was starting to twist tight in his belly when Yu pulled back and wiped at his eyes.  Kiro tipped his head to one side; he’d never seen a look quite like that before.  The only one that came close was when Andromeda said she had a cure for Luminor, and then the look on Strify’s face was more like what he was seeing now.  Like someone had given him part of his soul back.

“Thee I need to introduce you to some people.” Kiro waited, Yu had spoken in slow Basic and the other guy, Thee, no _Theon_ had nodded his understanding.  Yu reached for them and Mei started moving so Kiro went along with it.

Yu wiped his eyes again and Kiro noted the other guys eyes weren’t exactly dry either.

“Theon, my heart Kiro and Mei.  Kiro, Mei, one of my heart brothers, Theon.” Yu voice ended on a near sob.  Kiro blinked as Theon stared down at them in shock.

“Two?  Yuki?”  The rest of Theon’s words were musical gibberish, but the look on his face said clearly that he thought Yu was nuts to have two lovers.

Yu just started laughing.

“Well people are laughing, that’s a good sign.” Sammy sounded like he wasn’t recovered from Kiro’s bite.  Andromeda would be pleased; his normal paralytic was out of Romeo and Timo’s systems within twenty minutes of the initial bite and neither man ever gotten more than a tiny bit groggy.  With the adjustments, which only lingered in Kiro’s system for a few hours, they were out cold in minutes and stayed that way for several hours.

They both hated it.  All a supplemental dose of regular nanos did was clear their minds for bit before they got swept under.  But two men was a lousy sample size and Andromeda hadn’t been sure it would keep other Nietzschian’s under as well.

Sammy was leaning more or less upright against the bulkhead when Kiro turned around.  The look on his face as his eyes ping ponged back and forth between Kiro’s face and Mei’s was priceless.

“Oh Ancestors, Yu wasn’t one lethally venomous lover enough?  You had to go find **another** one?”

Yu’s knees buckled and he was on the decking laughing himself silly as a very perplexed Theon watched.  Chai threw his hands in the air, scooped his helmet up and walked off; Dorian appeared to be fighting down a giggle fit of his own and followed.

Kiro decided to vent some of his frustrations.

“Admit it Sammy, you just aren’t man enough to handle me.”

Mei giggled at the way Kiro flipped his hair and smirked at Sammy.  The taller Nietzschian just sighed and slid down the bulkhead to sit more or less safely on the decking.  He propped his arms on his knees and leaned back into the bulkhead and stared up at Kiro.

“At this point I think I’m going to admit to nothing.  I might last longer then.  Where did you find someone who looks just like you Kiro?  I thought you had no other family.”

“She’s not my sister,” Kiro drawled warningly, there were a lot of things the Nietzchian didn’t know and wasn’t going to learn any of them any time soon.

Sammy managed a fairly honest smile.  That alone told Kiro that Sammy was massively wasted from the bite.

“Noted.  I’d still like an explanation, _explanations_ to a great many things.”  Sammy scrubbed his face with one still unsteady hand.  “The least of which is where the _hell_ did you find an old High Line warship when the last we knew you were doing your regular irregular dealings?”

“You’re still drunk.” Kiro observed, at some point a lot of explanations would have to be made, he wasn’t about to do it with Yu wheezing on the floor like a dying generator.  Sammy gave him a half hearted glare.

“And I _wonder _why **_that_** is?  What the **hell** did you do to your paralytic?”

Kiro noticed Sammy’s voice was starting to slur again.

“Who? Me?  Why would**_ I_** do anything?”  Kiro tried for an innocent tone but knew his wicked grin would negate it.

Sammy was having trouble keeping his head steady as the venom still in his system kept trying to pull him under.

“Because you’re a devious little monster?  Yuki?”  Sammy’s voice was a bit plaintive.  Yu mopped his eyes and looked up to answer.

“Yeah Sammy?”

“Am I going to wake up from this?”

Yu’s grin softened as he accepted a terribly confused Theon’s hand to pull him up off the decking.

“Yeah Sammy, you’ll wake up.  I’ll even ask Franky to make coffee for you.”

Kiro had to bite his lip to keep the giggles inside at the way Sammy’s face lit up at that idea.  The Nietzschian adored Franky’s coffee. He was fading fast though and starting to slide sideways the rest of the way down the bulkhead.

“Really?”  Anything else he wanted to say got lost in a mumble as the paralytic finally swept him completely under.

Yu stroked a bit of Sammy’s blond hair out of his face and checked his vitals before nodding to Mei.

“We can move him to medical.  Theon,” The rest of Yu’s words were lost to more musical gibberish.  But the other man nodded, answered in kind and led the way to a smaller version of a medical bay.  Not as nice as Andromeda’s but a damn sight better than either the Maru-ka’s or Serenity’s.

Yu’s eyes teared up again as he stroked gentle fingers over two of the sleeping faces.  Both men were striking in their way, one square and strong the other sharp and angular, both relaxed in deep sleep with soft black hair and pale smooth skin.  Kiro sidled up beside Yu to look down at the sleeping men.  He was comforted by the fact that Yu tucked him close to his side and kept an arm around his shoulders as he looked down at the two strangers.

Yu’s hand stroked over the sharper faced mans soft cheek and finely drawn eyebrows.

“Vivian, we came to crèche the same day.”  He then traced a light fingertip over the straight eyebrows and neat beard of the square face.  “Jason, he tried to keep us all out of trouble, he was older than us.”  Yu’s voice broke.  “I thought they were dead Ki, I thought all I had left was Lumi and Frank, and Frank was Lumi’s friend, not mine.” 

Kiro hugged Yu tightly and just stood there as Yu leaned on him and cried.

Theon hesitantly wrapped both his arms around Yu from behind and rubbed his cheek over Yu’s shoulder.  For a long moment Kiro and Theon stared at each other over Yu’s shoulder, silently coming to an agreement to not overtly fight for right now.  Theon buried his face in Yu’s shoulder and held on as Kiro cuddled into Yu’s chest.

They stood like that until Andromeda’s remotes came in with stretchers to move the sleeping men safely off the smaller ship into Andromeda’s medical bay.

~0~

Theon was uncomfortable as hell on this ship.  It was as big as or bigger than the largest Alliance warships.  The corridors were wide, the ceilings tall, clearly intended to be comfortable for species that were far larger than the scant handful of humans who currently populated her decks.  And it wasn’t the largest ship the Commonwealth had.

It had an AI who was terrifyingly human and a captain who as barely more than a child.  He’d been given liberty of the ship with the understanding that if a door or hatch was locked to let it be. Given the complexity of the AI and the rest of the systems he could see Theon had no doubt he was being monitored everywhere he went.

Jason and Vivian and the rest of the Calypso’s crew were sleeping in the medical bay under the watchful eye of a lovely creature with fine black hair and warm blue eyes.  He’d said his name was David and had smiled at him in an utterly disarming way before prattling away about his friends conditions.

More than half the explanation was lost simply because he didn’t have the vocabulary, but Theon did understand that they were stable and behaving pretty much as expected.  Theon felt a lot better seeing the bloody bite marks cleaned and covered with something that looked like a faintly milky looking plastic.  Whatever it was it bonded instantly and shifted coloration to almost match Jason and Vivian’s skin tones.  He’d felt very strange getting checked over himself.  Seeing a hypo coming at him had very nearly had him running, but David had been cheerfully chattering at him, and the few words he did understand made him think that David wasn’t going to hurt him.

Yukito had come in and grinned at him from behind David’s back.  He didn’t seem to think David was doing anything dangerous so Theon had tried to relax and let the medic finish.  He’d felt more uncomfortable at the sight of the tiny man who had tried to bite him, and had bitten everyone else on this ship he really knew.  Well everyone he’d come with anyway.  Yu said Luminor and Franky were here as well.  He only vaguely remembered Luminor’s best friend and training partner.

Seeing Yu tuck the smaller man under his arm and pull him close made him think a lot had changed.  But seeing the look on Yu’s face as he stroked gentle fingers over Viv and Jason’s face told him they had been missed, and missed badly.

“He doesn’t like me much.”

“Kiro love, Thee hates it when people get the drop on him.” Yu looked up and grinned at him, the familiar spark in his gray eyes told Theon that Yu was very well aware the conversation was being listened to.  “Give him some time to get used to you.”  Yu closed his eyes and wound both arms around Kiro and rubbed his cheek over the hair on top of the smaller man’s head in a very relaxed gesture of affection.

“Why was he so freaked out about Mei?”

Theon rolled his eyes.  He’d thought they were twins.  Yu had always joked about twins being a fantasy of his, to come halfway across the universe to find Yukito **had** a set of twins, and that they were _tiny_ and on top of that that they were dangerous as hell had been a bit much to cope with.

“He thought you two were twins, and that I was out of my mind for taking you both on.”  Theon had to smile, Yu was still a joker.  And he wasn’t sure if he was relieved that Mei and Kiro weren’t related or not yet.

“Why?” Kiro lifted his face from where it had been nestled into Yu’s chest.  “He afraid we’d kill you in bed?”  The pair exchanged a grin that had Theon groaning and walking out.  He didn’t need to watch Yu’s playful verbal version of foreplay, he wanted to watch his heart brother fucking that little monster even less.

That had been hours ago and now he was well and truly lost and beginning to get hungry.

The sound of running water attracted his attention and had him diverting off the main corridor to follow the noise.

It didn’t take long for him to find the source and he stared in shock at the gardens he’d found.  The water was a small fountain, feeding a tiny trickle of a stream.  The smell of green things caught him by the throat and Theon stared at the room filled with life like he hadn’t seen since they had left the training temple.

Portions of the gardens were a mess; others showed signs of being set to right.  He dropped to one knee and cupped a single tiny blossom with one trembling hand. So strange to see such tiny delicate flowers and know they were dangling in the blackest space, a tiny jewel of peace on a great weapon of destruction.

“It’s perfectly safe, this is the herb garden.”

Theon flinched and fell over backward to land with a thump that bruised his dignity as well as his backside.  He looked up to see the other half of Yu’s insanity equation.  Up close he could see the differences between her and Kiro.  Her nose didn’t have the little snub up at the tip that Kiro’s did, her lips were a bit softer and her eyes were a tarnished copper green rather than the clear blue green Kiro’s were.

But from Sammy’s slurred words before whatever venom was in Kiro’s bite had swept him under she was the same species as Kiro, and therefore quite dangerous.

“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She seemed sincere and her manners made him think of the retired companions that cared for the gardens in the training temple he’d been raised in.  Serene, graceful, things that should have been comforting, if he wasn’t freaking out a little bit over how she could kill him with a simple bite if he annoyed her.

And she looked so harmless, dressed in slick deep green leather trousers and a loose white shirt, more like someone’s younger sister.

She looked slightly sad by the way he flinched away, but he was still freaked out.  Ironically his salvation came when Kiro called for her.

“Mei,”

Theon groaned as the little menace that would haunt his nightmares came trotting up.  Mei turned and smiled and snuggled right into the slightly taller man’s arms.  He gulped a little; they looked so comfortable, so safe. And Kiro was clearly protective of Mei, but then Kiro looked up and grinned at him.

Theon growled under his breath.  The little bastard knew he made Theon twitch and was messing with him on purpose.  That impression was reinforced by the spark of mischief behind those blue green eyes and the way Kiro stuck just the pointed tip of his tongue out at him.

“C’mon Mei, our guests are all awake and Strify wants to get introductions out of the way over supper.”

Theon couldn’t help perking up at that.  Both that Jason and Vivian were awake and the thought of food.  His stomach chimed in with a loud grumble.

“C’mon,” this time Kiro was addressing him, “we can lead you back.”

Theon was quietly grateful the shorter man didn’t offer him a hand up.  He wasn’t sure if he could have made himself take it just now.  He scrambled back to his feet, dusted his ass off and quietly followed the pair out.

~0~

Sammy rested his chin in his hands and just watched as Franky worked his magic in the kitchen. Christian had offered to help as had Linke and both had been set to fairly simple tasks.  Christian was set to washing and chopping vegetables and Linke to minding the water levels of the rice steamer.  He didn’t much care who did what as long as he got fed.

A shot of painkiller had mostly cleared the worst of his bite hangover but Julian was still leaning heavily against the counter with his head buried in his arms.  Franky had offered him a tall glass of something that looked horrific but smelled pretty good to help ease the worst of the pain and whenever he could lift his head Julian was taking sips.  Sammy had tried rubbing his lovers back but had gotten whimpered at that it was making Julian nauseous so he’d stopped.

Christian had bounced back after his pain shot and neither of the humans appeared to be having trouble.  Apparently the additional nanobots had compounded problems this time around.  He’d have to remember to warn the research team, so that maybe they could find a way to work around Ssulli bite toxins in the future.

On the good side he knew most of the people here.  He’d met, more properly this time, Chai and Dorian, the last of the ships Lancer contingent, he’d learned that the lunatic pilot who had scared the life out of him had been Kiro, not that he’d really expected to learn otherwise.  Sammy had even learned that Jan had hacked him bridge camera and that he’d been soundly mocked by Yu for his reaction to Kiro’s second run.  What soothed the sting of that was the fact Jan had also played back to audio log of the conversation between Chai and Kiro right before and after that run.  It also helped that Vivian, who was an extraordinarily skilled pilot had flinched at the video playback and managed to get out that he’d have needed clean pants after a stunt like that.

He’d had to have Yu explain the ‘yo-ho’ joke to him, which Yu had done with great glee.  Mei had been a very pretty pink when Yu was done belting out the chorus of the very dirty song.

Theon was giving Kiro and Mei wary looks and likely would for some time.  Jason and Vivian had looked at the two Ssulli and given Yu long stares before one of them had made some comment that had Yu grinning like madman.  Apparently he was getting ribbed about one lover not being enough from the way Lumi and Franky smiled.

Interestingly Luminor looked a lot better than he had the last time Sammy had seen him.  His illness killed his appetite and sapped his energy so seeing him nibbling long curls of some crisply fried vegetable was rather comforting.  More amusing were the looks Strify kept giving him from under his eyelashes.  Someone was getting teased and Strify clearly wanted to pay his impish lover back.  Bu they’d have to wait until after they all ate.

At least Sammy hoped they’d wait, he wasn’t sure how he’d cope with watching Strify have Luminor on the table in front of him when his own lover wasn’t feeling up to much of anything.

Juri and Jan came in with an armful of what looked like fresh fruit.  From the look Mei gave Jan and the soft scolding she gave both men as she went to help they’d just snuck in and swiped what looked good.  Apparently she was the person who kept the gardens up on this ship.

The smell of dannelie pears got Julian picking his head up in interest.  Sammy had to admit the rich sweet smell had set his mouth watering and he didn’t like the things nearly as much as Juke did.  A pleading look and Sammy sighed and reached over to swipe one of the blushing dark golden fruit and rummaged a small folding knife out of his pocket.

The fruit was so ripe that the first cut had sweet juice spilling over his fingers.  The first wedge he cut free was offered over to his lover and was accepted with a happy little sigh and a small smile.  Each of the next few were taken carefully as Julian nudged his seat a little closer, and a little closer with each bite.  The last bite Sammy gave Juke directly from his own lips.

“Okay love birds, knock it off.”  Christian growled when Julian rolled his eyes at him and started sucking pear juice off Sammy’s fingers.

A low growl dragged both of them out of the faintly contented haze of foreplay.  A look back into Christian’s eyes and they both flushed a little.

“Save it for later.”  Christian grumbled as he helped Franky and Linke bring the food and necessary dishes and utensils to the table.

Reluctantly Sammy did scoot back away from his lover, but he made sure Juke got served before he did.  As he ate he watched his fellows.  Luminor was eating far better than he’d ever seen before, but Strify was still watching his lover very carefully, and nudging bowls of things he liked closer in an unsubtle hint for Luminor to take another serving.  The two Lancers did an odd little dance around each other, one that Sammy was all too familiar with, he and Juke did a similar dance all the time.

Franky was being cuddled gently into Linke’s side, Jan was half in Juri’s lap and amusingly Vivian and Theon were sitting very closely together.  Yu had his near twin menaces sitting to either side of him and both were sneaking bites off his plate and feeding him bits from their own.  Timo was sitting watch and David had come by earlier to get plates for both or them.  Something which Sammy thought was odd given it wouldn’t take all _that_ long before someone could be up to relieve the Nietzschian.

The poor kid who was acting as captain kept staring down at his plate, his ear flushed a rather cute pink.  More interesting was that Romeo kept shooting the young man little sidelong glances, rather like the ones Christian kept shooting at poor Jason.

Sammy smiled down at his plate.  This could be an interesting trip.

~0~

Jason felt a little like a baby chick in the eyes of a hawk when Christian was around.  He’d been getting the feeling of being watched a lot around the medic, but now it was becoming a near constant itch.  The little flickers he was getting out of the corners of his eyes told him he wasn’t imagining it.  Christian was watching him.

Now the question was why the other man was watching him. 

It wasn’t helping his nerves to see Julian and Sammy exchanging similar looks.  Worse he’d managed to somehow walk in on Vivian and Theon consummating their relationship, **_again_**.  He’d thought on a ship this size that would have been almost impossible, clearly he underestimated Theon’s exhibitionist streak.

He was slowly getting used to Yu’s, whatever they were.  They weren’t twins, but they looked enough alike it was positively creepy.  At least they didn’t have the weird body language thing or do the speaking looks of real twins.

Jason was still getting used to the idea that he, Thee and Viv had managed to Cryo-sleep for over a decade.  Yu had missed them; he’d all but broken down in tears when he’d seen all of them walk out of med bay under their own power.  According to Thee he’d been in tears just to know they were all alive.  All this time Yu had thought he’d lost them forever.

At least Yu wasn’t hovering.  Seeing the kid who had been the most independent of all of them reduced to a hovering wreck would have been a bit much for his nerves to cope with.  They had known he was alive from the instant they woke up.  They’d had someone who could sort of speak Mandreena and once they were all awake and recovering she’d been able to confirm they were associated with Yu just by the tattoos on their arms.

Jason had been shocked to see flat-pics of their lost heart brother.  He’d gotten the last few centimeters of height they’d been expecting him to gain, but he had been so thin.  Not _starved_ thin, but more like worked hard and didn’t eat quite enough thin.  And he had red streaks in his hair, not the dyed stripes he’d had as a child in the crèche, but odd cross grained streaks that never seemed to stay in the same place from picture to picture.

Seeing a video of him had made the oddness of those streaks painfully plain.  They moved, apparently in tune with his moods as he’d played a playful tickle game with a tiny little thing that had bi colored hair, nearly black on the bottom and a pale clear gold on top.  It was just a short bit of tape had been both painful and reassuring.  Yu moved the same way; sleek and graceful, his smile was slightly different, tinged with sadness but his laughter was still bright.

Meeting that tiny blonde thing for the first time was something he didn’t remember, and judging Theon’s skittery reactions that was probably a good thing.  Whatever Kiro was he wasn’t human.  And he and Mei, for all their creepy resemblance to each other, weren’t close kin.  But whatever they were they were far from helpless.  Even Sammy treated little Kiro with a strange respect, and it was for more than his apparently phenomenal piloting skills.

The hairs on the nape of his neck were rising again, and Jason forced himself to not turn and look.  He even managed to not jump when strong square hands curled themselves gently over his shoulders.  Jason gave himself a few points for not flinching when those long ivory spikes, bone blades he reminded himself, came within millimeters of his throat as those strong arms wound themselves around him.  He just kept his breathing and heart rate as steady as he could as he stared out at the tiny pinpricks of light that were stars and the odd swirling of light and matter from the dying red giant being slowly sucked away by its black hole of a twin.

“Watching the stars?”

The words breathed in his ear finally make Jason twitch, his ears, more specifically the skin behind them, was _horribly_ ticklish.  Christian chuckles and nuzzles and Jason squeaks and twists away.

“What do you **want** with me?”

The measured blink of those pale blue eyes makes Jason want to scream in frustration. What training he had in reading people seemed to mean nothing when dealing with this one man.  After a year he _still_ can’t read those blue eyes, and can’t decipher what this aggravating Nietzschian _wants_ with him.  Demanding to know in the past had only ever gotten him smirks, winks and cryptic comments.

This time it got him backed into a view screen with strong hands holding his hips tightly.

“I just want you.”

Jason opened his mouth to yell that he was fed up with the cryptic commentary when his breath was stolen away in one of the hottest most demanding kisses he’d ever had in his life.

Then he wasn’t interested in yelling anymore.

~0~

Theon heard a familiar voice moaning in pleasure and groans before trying to find his way back to the mess hall _again_.  Damn-it, why was everyone else able to navigate all these endless identical corridors and **he** was still getting lost?

~0~

Kiro idly wondered if he was jinxed.  He’d been sitting a quiet watch when the call had come in.  Pretty usual, except for the fact that normally when he took a call at two in the morning it was Rom or Linke or somebody he _knew_, not some fussbudget of a Commonwealth bean counter.  At least he’d been human.  Kiro wasn’t going to have to take a copy of the tape to Linke to get a bead on how horrified the guy had been to find someone not of their precious Commonwealth sitting watch.  Never mind there were only **four** members of said crew on board and one of those really shouldn’t have been out of bed to do fly by tricks on Sammy and his guys three days ago.

And fussbudget bean counter had been _horrified_, utterly and completely horrified, when Kiro had answered.

That Kiro was sling sideways across the captain’s chair _might_ have some _small_ part of the horror factor.  But Kiro was just too short to sit straight in that chair without his legs going to sleep.

Fussbudget refused to talk to him, so Kiro had awakened Shin and Chai and both had responded with remarks of they’d be on deck momentarily.  Kiro wasn’t about to accidentally hang up on this asshole by trying to transfer the call to quarters.

Rommie could have done it, but clearly she wasn’t best pleased with his fussbudget-y-ness and felt having to wait for the people he wanted to speak with to get up to the command deck was a good punishment.

Just to tweak the bastard Kiro did the more formal version of handing over the command to Shin.  Not that it was anything like military, but it was enough that Chai’s blue gray eyes lit with hidden laughter.

Shin managed to not grin or giggle when he dismissed him back to quarters.  It was almost the end of his watch anyway, and Romeo would be in the mess right now getting a bit of breakfast and some coffee.

Kiro trotted down the hallway; maybe Rommie would patch a blind feed off into the mess for them if they asked nicely.

~0~

Chai sighed in frustration as he walked a half step behind and to Shin’s right down the corridor to the mess where everyone else was gathering to hear what the latest fussbudget bean counter had said.  Dorian had laughed at Kiro’s term for the petty bureaucrats they’d been dealing with over the last week.  Chai had tried to keep up a proper front but failed; the term was just too apt for their situation.

But they’d be going home soon, well to what was left of home anyway.

Chai held no illusions.  He and Dorian and probably Mei as well were going home to face a forced retirement.  It was highly unlikely that they would be allowed to remain in service.  Last night he’d finally accepted his beloved wives were long gone and had bawled like a child in Dorian’s arms.  His babies, his darling children were grown, married and gone as well.  The family was still alive and well, just not **_his_** family.  Not their family.

He had his duty still, but he was starting to agree with Mei’s little look alike.  Duty sometimes sucked.

Chai held his position as Shin told everyone else the news.

They were going home.

He didn’t want to go.

~0~

Chai paced in circles as they waited for the final word on their fates.  He and Dorian already knew what was happening with them, it hurt, but they knew.  They were now retired from the Argosy Lancer Corps.  Their last time in formal whites had been this morning at their retirement ceremony.

Mei had been told she was no longer part of the support corps and she’d learned that all her instinctive knowledge meant nothing when ranked against the new standards the corps required.  She’d been devastated and Yu and Kiro had been hard pressed to offer any kind of comfort.

In the end it had been Strify and Romeo arguing quietly if she’d be happier aboard one of their ships or back on Rashava Station.  Sammy had quietly offered her a place if she wanted it with his research team.  Book learning could be gotten easily; her kind of instinctive understanding of plants could not.  If Ssulli and humans could have cross breed and if she had been full female Sammy would have considered her for breeding purposes, short or not she had some very valuable genetics. 

Of course once he’d said **that** Yu and Kiro had both growled at him.

Mei had managed to pull herself together enough to stand calm and dignified to Dorian’s right at the little bit of idiotic pomp earlier.  The instant her formal whites were packed away though she’d collapsed in tears in Kiro’s arms.

They’d gotten a fairly sizable lump sum payout for ‘back pay’ and offered a ticket home.  But Mei already knew ‘home’ wouldn’t have her back and Chai and Dorian were heavily reluctant to turn up on the doorsteps of their great and great-great grandchildren.  Not after they’d already been mourned as dead by their family.

Strify, Romeo and Sammy had already taken the joint reward for retrieving and returning Andromeda, but none of them felt very happy about it.  The whole thing left a bad taste in their mouths.  But all of them were practical enough to take the three million thrones each and stash the money away in hidden accounts all over the place.  Even with Luminor in intensive therapy and their three Alliance refugees getting serious subliminal language coaching on the Commonwealth’s nickel things felt off.

Part of it was that they were still waiting to see what would happen to Andromeda and Shin-yavi.  The council had been deeply disturbed that a civilian had been acting as captain and quietly censured Chai for it.  He’d blandly responded that Shin-yavi had the codes; therefore he was captain, end of story.  They hadn’t liked that, but had no real choice but to accept it.  It was what they trained their people to think after all.

The fact that the three men who Shin said buried the codes in his mind were all dead didn’t help matters.  It only complicated things.  Legally Shin was still a child in the eyes of Commonwealth law.  Technically Andromeda could refuse to submit to those codes if they were input by an unauthorized source.  It was part of her internal security.

Ironically it was part of the internal security that had been disabled for her last mission by the demand of the people she was going to parlay with.  The very people who had killed members of her crew and tried to kill her, people that the Commonwealth still had difficulties with diplomatically.

Romeo had snorted at that and muttered about the right hand not knowing what Sarr-cat the left hand was feeding.

The white doors to their left opened up and a dazed trio of humans came out being gently herded by a blue Than. Yu was instantly on his feet to help settle his friends safely in chairs and ask anxiously if they would be alright.

The Than clicked her mandibles in a way that suggested she was pleased before she assured Yu that all three would be fine after a good sleep and that the subliminal treatments had worked better than expected.  Whatever _that_ meant, but all three at least seamed to have a better grasp of the conversation going on around them.

Sammy and Christian had exchanged a long speaking look at that but had said nothing.  Christian though carefully settled Jason against his shoulder when the human began listing over in his chair.  Theon and Vivian just curled into each other and dozed off looking rather like two exhausted puppies.

All they were waiting on now was word on Shin, word on what would happen to Andromeda and for Luminor to be handed back to them.

~0~

Franky quietly took over the kitchen area of the set of rooms they’d been given and went through the soothing motions of kneading dough.  He’d mixed several fillings and just needed to get the dough smooth and let it rest.  He’d been able to get a good set of steamer baskets in the market earlier and had been amused to see that Vivian and Theon had taken the subliminal lessons far to well, both men had been flirting and playing up on their accents to susceptible females of several species.  Incorrigible flirts the pair of them, and it was comforting to see no matter how much time had passed that hadn’t changed.

He’d been able to walk by the public viewing windows of the shipyard and had seen Andromeda being worked on.  He hoped that boded well, it seemed silly to repair and refurbish a ship you were going to decommission.  And he _liked_ Rommie.

Franky’s mind wandered as his hands worked.  He’d noticed some interesting byplay between Sammy’s medical friend and Jason.  The very first hints of a mutual attraction being played out in hidden glances and faltering steps, Franky smiled at the thought of another of Yu’s old crèche mates being safely paired off.  Sweeter was seeing Strify’s face when Luminor had finally been released from the medical bay.

Luminor would be a bit frail for a while as he regained lost weight and muscle mass but the virus that had been slowly killing him was out of his system.  Strify looked like a man who had been staring hell in the face and been told it was all a mistake and he was really going to get to walk into paradise after all; shock, disbelief and finally relief and a deep burning joy.

Franky didn’t expect to see Strify or Lumi for several hours at the very least.  If the rooms had food synths he’d have said they wouldn’t see either man for the next week, but they didn’t and Franky knew Strify was going to make sure Lumi ate regularly.

Careful hands rolled out the dough, cut circles and filled them, pinching the tops tightly closed before laying each bit in a steamer basket.  Some time in the middle of working Linke came in and took one look before pulling down the rice steamer and starting a larger than normal batch.  Linke had seen this once before, before they’d split into two crews, after they’d had an unexpected windfall of almost half a million thrones.  The celebration that night was one they both remembered quite fondly.

The baskets were stacked and the steamer kicked up to full steam, and then Franky rested in Linke’s arms, content for now to wait as things cooked.  Linke seemed happy enough to just cuddle and bury his nose in Franky’s hair.

~0~

Kiro blinked when the sound of steady thumping broke his concentration.  Mei looked up when he turned toward the door.  They’d been doing a bit of research on possibilities for extra schooling when the odd noise had impinged on their ears.  Kiro realized with a start that it had been in the background for quite a while.  They exchanged a look and rose, heading toward the door, leaving Yu curled around a second hand guitar in the room’s only chair.

Yu’s head lifted when the door opened and the thump-thump noise became louder.  His nose twitched at the rich smells that wafted in and rose, setting aside the guitar to follow his two smaller lovers.

Out in the kitchen the smells and the odd noise were both explained.  Linke and Juri were pounding steamed rice into a paste in a large stone mortar; every so often Franky would sprinkle sugar over the dough and let the two bigger men work again.  While they were pounding away he was taking bits of an earlier batch and filling them with what looked like bits of jam, sealing them shut and laying them in a steamer basket.

“Is that fresh Bao?”  Yu turned as saw Vivian hovering in the other entrance to the kitchen.  Yu had to grin when he realized Theon and Jason were right behind Viv and that only Jason’s hand on Theon’s shoulder was keeping the younger man from bounding in a trying to swipe a bit of uncooked dough straight from the mortar.  They’d done that as children, he, Theon and Vivian, every festival where Bao was made they’d be right by the mortars with a herd of other children, stealing little bites of the raw dough.

If only they knew what was going on with Shin.

~0~

Chai quietly watched as the council finally came to their decision about what to do with Shin-yavi.  The decision about Andromeda was made in a closed session, as were most of the discussions over what to do with one time lost civilian.

They couldn’t take the codes from his mind, not without killing him, and most of the codes in question only applied to Andromeda herself.  The ones that didn’t could be changed fairly easily, so the issue of security at least was pretty much settled.

The issue of the young man himself was entirely another matter.

Tapes of his behavior during the attempted take over of Andromeda by the Argelian faction had been shown.  Tapes of the salvage mess had also been shown and both situations had been hashed over just as thoroughly as any mission Chai had ever commanded.

Over and over again it was highlighted that Shin was a _civilian_. Not a trained Argosy cadet or junior officer. A civilian, a child, who had done everything in his power to keep the ship his grandfathers had commanded free, done everything any trained officer would have to protect the rest of the crew.  He’d unflinchingly passed the order to evacuate, and his concerns then weren’t for his own safety, but how to best ensure the survival of the maximum number of crewmen.  Actions the records proved had helped to save over a thousand of the surviving crew.  Only then had he turned to the few remaining on the bridge.  And only after he’d been ordered to go by the last dying senior officer had he fled the command deck.  Actions more like a senior officer than the child he was.

The council reluctantly had voted, and interestingly had almost unanimously decided to turn the boy over to his surviving relatives.  They also had made a note to watch the young man and possibly to recruit him into the Argosy corps at a later date.  Clear thinking and devotion to duty like his was not to be passed over lightly.

Chai thought the odds of Shin taking them up on any future offer were pretty slim after _this_ month long fiasco.

He did find it amusing that three ships worth of men were waiting for Shin-yavi to be released from protective custody.  There was no telling how long it would take to find and appropriately brief Shin’s family, so for now he was back in their care.

Chai had expected that Shin would be thinner, had even expected the little gasp of relief and the hard hugs that had been handed around when they gotten the boy safe again.

He didn’t expect the whispered confession.

“They’re going to kill Rommie.”

~0~

Having three crews worth of men crowded around the main table in Serenity’s mess was interesting enough, having the last survivors of Andromeda’s crew there should have made it worse.

Strangely it worked.  Romeo and Jan were quietly going over the blueprints Linke had swiped from the shipyard with an eye to maximum effect for minimum personnel.  Julian and Sammy periodically added soft comments about jump efficiency and engine potential.  Vivian asked a question about engine lockouts that got Yu and Julian involved in a whispered discussion that had Strify groaning and burying his head in his arms. 

The engineering alone was making his head hurt, and the logistics of getting three crews and three ships out so they could essentially steal a fourth was just making him dizzy.

“Wait, wait, doesn’t that violate the Andromeda Accords?” Christian asked, sounding just as frazzled as Strify felt.

“Technically no,” answered Shin.  “The Accords grandfathered a few ships out.  Essentially any A.I. actively serving the Commonwealth at the time was excluded from the Silicon Sentience acts.  Andromeda and a few other ships still operate under the older laws where all the more recent A.I. ships have protections.”

“So you’re saying Andromeda worked her tail off to free all other sentient A.I.’s but left herself in slavery.” Sammy dropped his face into his hands.  “Well fuck.  So much for the unlawful execution without valid public trial idea.”  He huffed his hair out of his eyes, his head scarf having been an early casualty to his frustration.

“But no one is saying anything about her being decommissioned publicly,” reminded Jan. “And trust me between the three of us,” he gestured in an arch covering himself, Linke and Luminor, “we have the major and minor news outlets covered.  Not a peep other than her being refurbished as a training ship.”

“And training ships still have full A.I.’s in case of emergency,” continued Shin.  “But I know what I heard.”

“And we believe you,” Romeo hastened to reassure the unhappy teenager.

“It makes to much sense to not believe you,” continued Chai with a grimace.  “Andromeda has proved she’ll do what she has to and be damned the consequences before in the past.  She was all but autonomous with Dylan Hunt in the Restoration, not a subservient A.I. but a full Autonomous person.  Law or no law, that’s got to make some members of the council twitch.  She’s not protected under the newer laws, and she hasn’t sworn the oath and had the attendant programming installed to ensure loyalty to the Commonwealth.”  Chai spread his hands. “If she were to fly off they couldn’t really stop her.”

Kiro looked up at that and Strify had the same thought he did.  They locked eyes and Kiro nodded, letting Strify speak their thought out loud.

“Does anyone know if _Rommie_ is aware she’s working under a functional death sentence?”

And that was a question none of them could answer.

~0~

Nine days later Sammy was doing all he could to at least appear calm as he walked back to Serenity.  He’d been talking to one of his more distant cousins who worked at the Argosy shipyards.  To a man the Nietzschian’s were heavily disturbed.  The technicians, notably none of which were Nietzschian, had installed a lock on Andromeda’s personality core.

Rommie was now a prisoner in her own processors; she no longer had access to the rest of her ship body.

It was supposed to be quiet.

Sammy was going to make sure it didn’t stay quiet.

All their plans had to go into effect now, Rommie had less than a hundred hours now.

~0~

Rommie knew something was wrong, she knew it the instant that hated lock had come aboard her decks, but they’d had paralyzation codes and she could do nothing, not even scream.  Now her communications was in full lock down, she could see and hear everything that occurred but could do nothing about it.

Interestingly she noticed the number of Nietzschian’s on her decks had dwindled at an absurd pace, and after the lock went in place not a Than could be found gracing her decking.  Rommie couldn’t focus her exterior cameras very well but she could see an ever increasing crowd and they were clearly far from happy.

She remembered a horrific incident from before the fall, one of her fellows had gone unquietly mad and she’d been forced to help stop her from rampaging over an innocent planet and its helpless population.  The Council had put a lock on her, within one hundred hours she’d been purged, reformatted and had her core pulled.  Then they’d put a new A.I. in her shell.

It still gave her nightmares if she considered it to much.

She wanted to scream, to rage and fight but that damned lock had everything held at a distance.  Was this what organics felt when they had a cold?  If so no wonder they were so unpleasant when they were ill.

The Council wasn’t even allowing her the grace and dignity of a hearing and that had her seething under the locks hold.  She’d sent the remotes installed and been furious, they couldn’t get a pilot to take her out of dry dock and now with an increasingly fractious crowd of protesters they couldn’t execute her here.  So they were removing her out to a restricted bit of space by slagging **_remote_**.  The indignity galled her.

Ah, here were her executioners now.  How utterly delightful.

Her fury was sidetracked by a solemn wink delivered by the solitary Nietzschian in the party.

Augustus Bolivar.

Cousin to three of the Nietzschian’s she’d brought in to this back biting excuse for a port.  Something was up.

~0~

Augustus quirked a fleeting flicker of a smile at one of Andromeda’s camera’s, one of the very few that was actually visible, as he settled into the command chair.  He hoped Romeo’s little friend was as good a pilot as Rom claimed, otherwise all of this plotting and sneaking was going to get them right back here with a less sympathetic group of executioners.

The waste was appalling.  Andromeda was an old A.I. with centuries of experience, invaluable experience.  To just delete her like she was an out of date data file was sickening.  He’d made his protest then held his tongue when he was told the decision was final.

The Council had been forced to come to him.  The Than and the Perseids had refused en-mass to have anything to do with the execution.  He was the only other sentient who had the knowledge necessary to remove an A.I. processor core without damaging the rest of the system.

He could.  But he wasn’t going to.

It amused him tremendously that his human superiors had no clue what he was planning and thought him to be a dutiful soldier.  He was a dutiful soldier, just not quite the way his commander thought he was.

He just hoped Romeo’s plan was going to work; otherwise he was getting thumped on the head and dumped in an escape pod for no good reason.  At least he was getting hit with a tranquilizer dart first.  Samuel was right; Romeo’s friend Kiro was a _menace_.

~0~

Rommie wanted to laugh, she really did.  That last container held four of the most unlikely rescuers imaginable.  When the lock came off all she could manage to get out was a terribly old movie quote.

“Aren’t you a little short to be a Storm trooper?”

Jan erupted in giggles, proving that like his ancestor he was an inveterate movie nut.  To her surprise Chai’s dry remark hinted at a similar familiarity with the movie in question.

“At least we aren’t diving into a trash compactor on the way out.”  Chai sobered.  “Kiro’s piloting, but we only have a few jumps in the coils.  The cheep bastards didn’t replace it when they did everything else.”

“Probably to keep someone from stealing her,” teased Jan.  “We have three jumps maybe more and Kiro is the best slipstream pilot I’ve ever seen.  We can get to Rashava in three.”  Jan sounded absolutely confident.  “Jyrki and Sammy have the bits for me and Linke to build a replacement set of jump coils.”

Rommie focused on the slowly returning sensations from her decks and hull as she listened, not even trying to fathom why they’d taken the insane risk to come get her.  And she’d sworn she’d seen Serenity making for a jump point before they’d locked her processor down.  She thought that Calypso had left before then and as far as she knew the Maru-ka was loading cargo when she’d been locked down.

She started laughing, those delightfully devious humans. They’d made it look like it was impossible for them to have had anything to do with her disappearance.

If she’d been in an organic body she’d have been rolling on her decking until her stomach hurt.

Chai had his hands on the case covering her processor in concern.

“Rommie?”

Jan just shrugged.

“She’s just realized she’s dodged a nova bomb, Chai. I think she’s entitled to a few minutes of hysteria.”  Jan carried on sealing up the protective layers of armor and bulkheads around her core and nudged a rather shell shocked former Lancer toward the command deck.

~0~

Kiro squinted at the abstract mess on the front screen, one choice and he would be going back toward Tarn-Vedra, another he’d still be doubling back but going more toward Nietzschian space a third he’d be going toward the general area around Helsinki drift.

He chose, the possibilities collapsed and reformed.  Kiro closed his eyes and relaxed for a moment, but then he opened them and stared blindly up at the screen again and chose again.

~0~

Dorian watched from his position perched, rather irreverently, on the railing by the com station.  He chewed his lower lip and wondered how long the little Ssulli could keep it up.  Kiro had already muddled their track so much no one was going to be able to trace them through the slipstream tunnels.  And it was on one jump, it should have been impossible.  Oh theoretically he knew it was possible, one of his Argosy trainers had been a Persied with an absolute passion for slipstream theory and showed him Coram’s Paradox.  In theory it was possible to arrive somewhere before you’d left your original destination; it just was so unlikely that it wasn’t mentioned as anything more than the occasional anomaly or near mythic fairytale.

Everyone knew the story of Cuchulainn’s run.  Most thought it was just a creepy ghost story, but every now and again people would swear they’d seen the Hound and that the ship had warned them away from some unspeakable danger.

Dorian wondered if the pilot of the Hound was like Kiro.

He felt the little shudder and saw the shift on screen that said they were coming out of slipstream and was moving off the railing and forward to catch Kiro as he slumped over the controls for slipstream.

~0~

Sammy couldn’t stop his duck and yelp any more than he could have stopped breathing.  Something had come out of slipstream almost on top of them, and after Kiro’s little stunt with a slip fighter he was going to be a bit jumpy about anything coming anywhere near his front canopy.

Christian just snickered at him and checked the sensors.

“He’s early,” Julian observed. “I wasn’t expecting to see them for at least another week.  We haven’t seen the all points go out yet.”

“He may be good enough to use…”

“Blah, _blah_,_ **blah**_,” interrupted Christian.  “I am not listening to you two blather on about slipstream physics again.  It’s bad enough when I understand it.  That theoretical gibberish is enough to make my ears bleed.”

Sammy sighed and just accepted that Christian was a physician, not a physics geek.  Besides Chai was hailing them and he had to answer.

“Calypso here.  How was your trip?”

Chai grimaced before answering.

“Odd, very odd.  Get over here, Kiro’s a limp wet mess and Dorian isn’t much of a medic.”

“Same hanger spot as last time?”  Sammy started moving them over as he absently listened to Christian swearing as he headed for his medical bay.

“Yeah, see you in a bit.”  The screen went blank.

“He’s loosened up quick.”

Sammy groaned, the last thing he needed right now was Julian making vaguely sexual quips.

~0~

Romeo growled in annoyance at the collection of Argosy patches on the uniforms standing clustered around the airlock of his ship.

“Something I can help you gentle-beings with?”

“Have you been in contact with the ship Andromeda Ascendant in the last ten-day?”

Romeo blinked before he answered.

“She was in dry dock when Serenity left port.”  Completely true, and completely irrelevant to the question.  “You can check my logs, if you wish.”

They wished.  And they wished to know where each of his crewmen was.  Fortunately they had set up alibis for Jan at the same time they’d set up alibis for Kiro, and Juri had several messages that would prove he’d been with Sammy and his crew of lunatic researchers all this time.  Luminor and Linke were scarily good at false origin codes, especially when they had the connivance of the owners of said codes and several of the bounce relays in between.

Even better Jan and Kiro called while the investigation team was there.  Romeo had to fight to keep a smile off his face.  The pair of connivers had managed to set up the holo-cam to show off the ‘pretty bit of space’ they were in testing engines in.  Almost seven hundred and twenty degrees of very pretty and very empty space was clearly shown all around them.  Even better Kiro had instantly asked after the Maru-ka, more specifically Mei and Yu, and Romeo and the lot of snoops listened in as Juri passed on messages from the other ship mentioning they were still in transit to Helsinki Drift.  Kiro wasn’t bouncing like normal, but only people who knew him well would notice that tiny detail.

Sammy appeared in the background to remind them in passing to invite Romeo to some family get together on Rashava Station in three weeks and to pass on that someone in the family had had yet another baby and all was well.

Romeo could tell when the investigation team had decided this stop was a waste of time; they started fidgeting almost ten full minutes before Franky came up to offer his version of hospitality.  It _was_ almost mid-meal after all.

Linke still checked the ship for any added tech after they left, but apparently after a bit of coffee and hearing Timo grumbling about how he was fine without either of his hyper friends and quiet discussions of day to day things to do with the running of a ship.  Minutia of everyday life and the complete aura of relaxed calm on the ship drove the snoops off faster than threat of disintegration by mass particle rays.

It was almost too easy.

Romeo wished he could warn Strify that they were likely to face an interesting welcoming committee when they hit Helsinki Drift.

~0~

Strify blinked when he heard Yu swear in rather more creative Mandreena than normal as they came out of slipstream just outside of Helsinki Drift space.  There were two Commonwealth courier skip jumpers; one docked the other lurking with that peculiar level of screaming obviousness that only police were able to pull off when they were trying to be inconspicuous.

Kiro called it the ‘here I am, don’t look at me’ act.

At least David had warned them that they’d have company.  It still was aggravating that they’d gotten beaten here and according to Lumi there was nothing about a missing ship on any of the public news feeds.  Good for them as far as it went; it meant the Argosy Corps wanted things kept quiet.

In their boots Strify wouldn’t have wanted it broadcast that they’d lost a top ship of the line right out of their own dry docks.  Bad enough when they lost ships in space to pirates or natural hazards; to have a ship essentially stolen from under their collective noses by a bunch of civilian amateurs had to be chafing the High Command to no end.

Lumi had idly wondered how they would explain it, especially given the pomp and fuss they’d put up to having the ship returned mostly intact.  Strify hoped that Yu’s notion that they’d say nothing and hope no one noticed was what actually happened.  He really didn’t fancy getting chased all over the known universe for being in possession of a stolen craft.  Rommie could damn well take care of herself for one.

Strify watched as Yu went through the tedium of calling in, requesting a berth and waiting his turn to come in and dock.  At least they had several automated messages waiting and they could while away the tedium by watching them.

David giggled at the message from Jyrki, and Strify made a mental note to learn what the Sanguineous had done to make their little Callistan blush so pink.  He’d have to ask Jussi, a few pints of a good bitter beer and the pilot would relax enough in his company to spill anything relating to Strify’s crew. 

Jussi wouldn’t be so open around anyone he didn’t know, so it wasn’t as big a potential risk as it appeared.  More than once Jussi had used his apparent openness to confound potential hijackers and pirates.  Jyrki’s ship was far more heavily armed than she appeared and no one took on Vampire’s Dance without getting a serious and nasty surprise in her linked guns.  Just playing around the Maru-ka had only been able to fight her to a draw and that was before Romeo had gotten Serenity and they’d lost half their manpower.

Yu acknowledged flight control and started his approach.

“We should have people waiting to pick up their cargo.  The Levvytukku folks passed a message through control that they’d either be waiting or at our slip very shortly after we cleared ground control.” Yu didn’t even look up from his boards as he gently nudged the Maru toward her temporary berth.

“Any reason for the rush?”

“Apparently it’s usual for Astoraans.”  Yu shrugged a little.  “Grisha apparently mentioned us favorably.”

Strify had to smile at that.  They’d wound up making the Luurs rents several times over while they’d been stuck in port on Tarn –Vedra.  After Timo and Linke had found the shop and then Sammy and Julian had followed, the crews of all three ships had made very regular visits as they replenished things for instruments that had been long idle or only recently replaced.

David for one went through staff plasti like there was no tomorrow with all his composition experiments.  And after Jan had stumped a Persied in a chemistry contest they’d had a bit more free cash to play with.  Strify had no idea that flummoxing a member of the race of science geeks would get them **_paid_** for confusing them.

He wasn’t arguing though, extra cash was extra cash.

Mei and Luminor were checking over the crates for Levvytukku when he made it down to the hold.  Strify paused and considered his newest crew member.  She was clearly missing Kiro, but Yu was also missing his little lover.  Strify found it a bit disconcerting to watch the two cuddle together, without Kiro it looked off balance and odd.

“Jan’s checked in.  And I think we need to be very careful of letting him play with Sammy in the future.”  Strify blinked at the casual way Luminor spoke as the rear hatch opened up.  He had a suspicion of what his clever lover was up to when he saw a trio of men in uniform with the bright blue and white patches of the Argosy courier corps decorating the shoulders.  Luminor had pitched his voice to carry a good bit further than normal; he _wanted_ this bit of casual conversation to be overheard.

“Ah?” Strify prompted as he looked over the list that Mei offered.  Sixteen crates loaded and sealed at Tarn-Vedra, and sixteen still sealed crates ready to deliver here at Helsinki, that at least was completely in order.

“Mmm,” continued Lumi, looking terribly amused. “He spent almost ten minutes while we were waiting babbling away about the engines Sammy and Julian have been testing and how we should have sent Yu along.”

Strify groaned, Jan loved playing with tech things and engines were the one thing he and Yu could be positively terrifying with when working together.

“Tell him I’m not fronting the money for him to buy into Sammy’s company; he’s got to come up with that on his own.”

Luminor laughed and smiled pleasantly at the Astoraan who padded up the ramp as they headed down.

Interestingly the Argosy team stood to one side and just watched as Luminor attempted the greeting cough Linke had spent days trying to teach him.  However poor the attempt was the big tiger striped black and grey Luur was pleased that they’d at least tried.  It set a good tone for their dealings, the second half of the shipping fee was paid over in cash and Strify and Luminor helped Tolya and his sons load up the hover lifts to get their shipment safely back to their store.

As they worked there was a bit of idle chatter as Tolya asked after his cousin Grisha.  Luminor was able to answer as he wound up spending a bit of time at the shop while hunting appropriate name day gifts for everyone.  Strify tried wheedling what his was out of Lumi while they talked.  He failed, but it was amusing anyway.

Mei quietly got their second delivery ready in the main hold and made sure the half dozen single crate deliveries they had were all in order in case the people they were going to surprised them and actually came to the docks to pick them up.

Then Tolya and his sons were steering their lifts off toward the mercantile sector and Strify started closing the main section of the back ramp.  They’d leave the smaller hatch open as long as there were shipments aboard and someone to mind them.

Yu came bounding in from dealing with the Port Authority just as the Argosy team made their move.

“Captain Valentine?”

Strify stiffened and turned to scowl blackly at the person using that hated name.

“I no longer use that name.”  Yu froze mid-step and stared at the icy cold tone of Strify’s voice.  “It’s Captain Strife.  Jack E. Strife.”

All three Argosy officers froze at Strify’s words.  After a moment of mute consultation between the three one stepped forward, **_not_** the one who had initially addressed Strify.

“Apologies Captain Strife, I’m First Signifer Alex Murlesta, Argosy Courier Corps.”

Strify settled in to be a civilly obnoxious as he could, something that Lumi and Yu clearly recognized if the sighs and rolled eyes were anything to go by.  To his amusement Signifer Murlesta clearly was expecting it as well from the faintly pained look on his face.  Mei was just confused, she hadn’t been with them long enough to recognize Strify in his diva mode.

Yu almost felt sorry for the poor guy, almost.

~0~

First Signifer Alex Murlesta sighed as he and his crew settled back into their seats on the Mariposa.  That interview had been harder than it had needed to be.

“Zach,”

The blond pilot winced as he answered.

“Yeah boss?”

“Next time for the love of space make sure the name you ask for is the one in the file as being the one in use.”

Ezekiel made a soft snort as his younger teammate squirmed under their team leaders eyes.

“Sorry boss.”

“Yeah well chalk it up as a killer leaning experience.” Alex sighed and turned his eyes to the one Nietzschian on the team.  “Zek, opinions?”

“If they know anything about Andromeda’s disappearance they are hiding it very well.”  Alex groaned, typical Nietzschian non answer.  Zek grinned at the way Alex rolled his eyes and sighed, then gave a more complete answer.  “I don’t think they had anything to do with it.  The girl can’t hide anything to save her life and they all are clearly in very close contact with several other ships.  It would be too easy to unravel a lie just by looking at their contacts log.” He gave their rookie a small smile before explaining.  “They talk to each other, a **lot**, it appears to be trivialities, but under it are serious communications about what they are doing and what is going on around them.  Levels of detail like that are very hard to fabricate.”

Alex watched as their rookie absorbed that information with a blink.

“So they didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Poor kid was going for simple answers.

“Probably not.  But I bet if they learn who did help Andromeda they won’t be in a hurry to tell.”

“In their position it is unlikely I would tell either,” agreed Zek.

“So now what?” asked Zach as he watched the others belt in.

“Now,” answered Alex, “we go back on our courier circuit and keep our ears open for anything interesting.”

“So, just like normal?”

“Yep.  Just like normal.”  Alex held Zack’s eyes for a moment before undocking and backing neatly away from the Drift.

~0~

Strify squeaked in delight as Luminor tackled him into their bed and tickled.

“Was that strictly necessary?”

Strify squealed and squirmed away from Lumi’s tickling fingers then turned and rolled his lover under him and into the bedding.

“He called me by the wrong name, of course it was necessary.  If I hadn’t been a rampaging brat anyone who knew me would have been suspicious.”

Luminor sighed and gave him a look that if he hadn’t been bouncing with amusement over driving three Argosy officers around the bend would have had his breath catching for a whole other reason.

Then Lumi’s hands stroked up his spine in the exact right way to make his mind divert toward what else he could do with his darling lover while he was at Strify’s questionable mercy.  Strify grinned and began remarking territory as his, gently peeling Lumi’s shirt open and savoring every square centimeter of skin all over again as he re-memorized Luminor’s gasps and cries of pleasure.

Yu just sighed and headed back to the main hold where Mei was waiting.  They could wait a bit longer before going on their delivery route.

~0~

Jyrki came around after they’d gotten the last of their single crate deliveries dealt with.  He came with Jussi, Baize and a trio of the large and heavy duty hover lifts loaded with medium sized crates.  They also came laden with holo-pics of Timo-Timo’s newest baby daughter, a selection of personal favorites from the local Din Ho’s and a huge amount of gossip to be shared over barbecued pork, combination fried rice and snow pea leaves.

“The Hound was spotted again, just off the Dromery’s run; Sasuba’s place got hit with that flu again.”

Yu looked up from his food as Strify asked the question that came to mind.

“Didn’t they get hit with Triangulum Measles already this year?”

Jyrki nodded and took a sip of tea as Jussi picked up where he’d left off.

  

  1. Now some of them are really freaked out.”
  



“Given what that particular ship is associated with I’m not surprised,” said Lumi mildly.  “If I was somewhere and heard the Hound had been sighted on one of my inbound lanes I’d be getting very nervous.”

Jyrki grimaced and nodded his agreement.

“Even those of us who behave well with others are feeling a touch antsy having the Hound around. That ship has a reputation none of us is comfortable with.”

Strify sighed, he hated ghost stories, and ghost ships gave him the heebie jeebies.  He determinedly changed the subject.

“So what’s in the crates?”

Jyrki quirked an eyebrow but went with Strify’s shift in topics, he wasn’t comfortable talking about the Hound either.

“The engine parts for Samuel’s latest engine project.”  He smiled faintly at the low groan that escaped Baize.  The puzzled looks on Yu and Mei’s faces just made him chuckle softly.

“Okay... what’s the joke?” Strify prodded, poking lightly with the back of his chopstick.

“That blasted Niet and his crazy ideas,” groaned Baize.  “He keeps coming up with new ideas.  Stuff we don’t have parts for, stuff that’s got me and Timo hammering away in the prototype plant making models.”  The blocky man stopped. “Things that if they work half as well as he thinks they will we are going to have to incorporate into Vampires Dance.  The efficiency quotients alone...”

Strify groaned as Baize began blathering on about the technical aspect of the parts in question.  A simple answer of ‘experimental engine parts’ was more than good enough.  But Baize was the ships engineer as well as a fabricator, so for all his put upon grumping and bitching he really was fascinated with the changes Sammy and Julian were making.

And everything was so different that if the Argosy busy bodies got nosy as stopped them again before the rendezvoused up with the rest of the guys that no one would be the wiser about the size of ship those parts were destined for.

~0~

Kiro stared out at the stars and wished that Yu and Mei were there to help keep the dreams away. His missed them, Yu a bit more than Mei but he’d been with Yu a lot longer. He’d forgotten what it was like to sleep completely alone, to not be able to just climb a ladder and creep into a warm bed to cuddle.

He’d forgotten the dreams.

Kiro curled up a little tighter on the bench on Andromeda’s Observation deck and rested his chin on his knees.

He wanted to be home.

He wanted to be home even if that meant just that the Maru-ka was settled cozily in one of Andromeda’s docking bays and he had to walk down to curl up in his own bed.

It wasn’t that the bed in the room he was using wasn’t comfortable.  It was huge, soft and covered in silky soft linens.  But it was empty; too big, to cold and far, far too lonely for him to be able to get any real rest.  Even Yu’s favorite shirt and Mei’s jacket weren’t helping him sleep.

Kiro was so wrapped up in staring morosely out the window that he missed hearing the door slide open.  The feel of two warm and much missed pairs of arms winding around him and holding him tight. The sharp pinpricks of teeth and the tender nuzzle of soft lips had him relaxing into the combined embrace with a low whimper.

~0~

Sammy watched as Kiro was cradled in the arms of his lovers and waited until the small Ssulli relaxed and cuddled back before he turned and walked off the Obs deck, carefully locking the door behind him.  Kiro had been rattled and off balance since he’d managed to bring Andromeda here.  Rommie thought it was from strain from his use of Coram’s Paradox and the fact his two bond mates weren’t there to act as support.  A good bit of time with them should set things to right.

He hoped she was right, aggravating as the small Ssulli was Sammy didn’t want Kiro hurt.  Silent feet carried him down levels and across decks as Sammy indulged a trait that had driven his mother to distraction, the need to see with his own eyes that his team was well.  Chai and Dorian he already knew were quite well, he’d heard Dorian scream for ‘_more, harder, there_’ through the door to the cabin he and Chai shared.  Jason was in the herb garden trying to hide from Christian, and he’d already told Christian where the bashful human was.  Timo was napping with his head in David’s lap, Jan and Juri were asleep, but Jan had been going non-stop for days rebuilding Andromeda’s slipstream drives.  Linke, Julian and Yu had helped but the brunt of the technical work had been on Jan simply because he was small enough to fit in where the connections needed to be made.

A strangled cry had Sammy turning to his left.  Braced against the wall was Serenity’s other engineer, Linke was oblivious to everything other than the man kneeling at his feet.  Sammy paused and settled into watch.  Franky blowing Linke was always educational.

Linke whimpered and struggled to stay standing as Franky teased him, sucked him down slowly, then every so slowly pulled back off.  From the way Linke’s hands were clutching at the walls he’d been in this position for several minutes at least and it looked like Franky was in no hurry to finish things.  Sammy listened as Linke demonstrated why his friends teased him about being a language geek by begging needily for Franky to finish in several languages Sammy knew and more that he didn’t.  It was a rather impressive display, but his restlessness got Sammy moving again without either of the two lovers ever knowing he’d been there.

The next pair he found had him rocking back on his heels a bit.  He’d been aware at some level that his half brother was interested in the human that Andromeda still called her Captain, but he hadn’t known that Shin was interested as well.  They were both bent over a chess board and appeared immersed in the game, but from where Sammy stood the flirting was blindingly obvious.

Sammy gulped and turned to head back up toward Andromeda’s command deck.  Julian was up there, and he needed his partner rather badly right now.

~0~

Strify sighed and snuggled down into the bedding, cuddling Luminor close and thinking about another quick round of play before he took his turn on watch.  The bleep of the room’s com was a very unwelcome intrusion.

“All crew to the officer’s mess, we’ve had a development.”  Strify growled something rude, but still started moving.  Luminor had blinked awake at the sound of Shin’s voice and with a soft sigh rolled out of bed as well.  Quietly both dressed and after a few gentle kisses headed toward the officer’s mess

~0~

“So, they finally are announcing it,” mused Sammy.

“Took ‘em long enough,” grumbled Jan, only subsiding after Juri gave him a chiding look and wrapped one hand over Jan’s mouth.

“Is your Commonwealth normally this slow when it comes to losing one of their big ships?”  Theon didn’t even look up from the bowl of sliced fruit he was steadily devouring.  Vivian winced at Theon’s lack of tact but noticed the grimaces from many of the others gathered around the table.

“It is not,” came Andromeda’s voice from the ceiling.  “Normally within hours of the loss or suspected loss of an Argosy ship of my size there are data bursts flying.”

“That’s for normal disappearances, loss through accident or battle of some sort.”  Strify paused and took a slug from the coffee cup Luminor set in front of him.  “What about for ship mutiny Rommie?”

There was a long pause as Andromeda considered the question.

“Normally there would be orders going out within hours.  Orders to detain usually.” There was another long pause.  “I’m afraid Strify that mutiny but the ship rather than by her crew simply wasn’t all that common.”

“In my classes there were only ever two cases of mutiny by the ship, The Archer’s Gallant and the Windswept Stars,” Shin piped up looking like he was still chasing down some memory.  “But in class we were told both cases were caused by corruption of the ship’s A.I. by viruses.  Commonwealth ships are very loyal.”

Jason drummed his fingers on the table as he thought.

“Two cases, but what about that Consensus thing, the one Andromeda did the treaty with.”

“The Consensus of Parts rebelled by refusing to be used against the Commonwealth.  At least at first,” Andromeda chimed in, her voice sounding slightly sad.  “But later they changed; all of those ships are still in service in the Commonwealth under varying contracts.  We are programmed to be loyal, but we still wish to be treated as persons.”

“That can’t have been it, just two?” Timo’s rude scoff was quickly shushed by David.

“Here’s another fly in the ointment,” added Christian softly, “word is getting out that Rommie fled from an execution order.”  The medic’s face lit with an evil grin.  “Somehow parts of the High Councils meeting on what to do with Andromeda when she returned have gotten leaked and no matter how hard the powers stomp on it, it keeps getting out.”

Chai let out a low groan.

“Oh **that** has to be causing a stink.  The Alliance for Ethical Treatment of Artificial Intelligences has got to be screaming on the Empresses doorstep.”

Christian’s face lit with an unholy glee.

“More than that, Argosy High Command is being picketed and the Hegemony is refusing to step in to help calm things.”

A sort round of snorts and comments on Than being odd were bantered about as Franky and Luminor made another set of rounds refilling mugs with coffee and tea.  It was Franky who asked the question that was lurking on all their minds.

“So what does that mean for us?”

Shin exchanged a look with Chai, who groaned.

“I don’t want Rommie to die.” The soft words made both Chai and Dorian flinch.  With a soft sigh Dorian spoke up.

“We don’t either.  And Timo’s right there have been more than two mutinies by ships A.I.’s.  There have been over a dozen, still not many when you look at how long Argosy has been using A.I.’s and how big the fleet is.”  Dorian looked down at his mug and fidgeted with it, moving it in little twisting circles as he organized his thoughts.

“Normally when a ship ‘went rouge’,” Chai waggled his fingers in little quotation marks. “A series of hunters would be sent out to deal with the problem.  If things had gone public before we could deal with it there would be a bit of media attention highlighting a problem and how we were attempting to aid the stricken vessel.  That’s happened twice.”  Chai’s face was grim and Shin looked stricken.  “Normally we’d get to the ship first and orders were to take it out.”

“That’s murder,” protested Linke, realizing what Chai was saying.  He others around the table wore varying expressions of shock and sickened horror on their faces.  Dorian’s eyes were haunted and Chai looked sick.

“We were one a mission like that.  Once.” Chai shuddered.  “The ship had a two man crew and was rebelling because they both were sick, had picked up something on a planet they’d been sent to do an initial survey of.  They needed help and we were ordered to shoot her to atomic dust because the powers didn’t want the illness to spread.  It spread anyway.” 

“Now there’s legislation trying to restrict how people carrying the disease can move,” added Dorian softly, “as if they chose to get infected.  And most of the people infected aren’t able to transmit the disease; they just need blood proteins to survive.”

There was a long moment of silence, then Strify was on his feet pacing and swearing.

~0~

Strify really was a lot like Bekka, Andromeda mused as she watched her odd collection of crew, especially when he was angry.  She was a little surprised that Strify wasn’t venting the famous Valentine temper on Chai, but she supposed he could see how sickened Chai was about that past mission.  She remembered Trifecta’s death, and she remembered the written protest one very junior officer had submitted afterwards.

She remembered.

And now she was keeping her sensors on the lookout for other Argosy ships.  Odds were they’d send another ‘clean up’ crew to try and take her out.  It was easier to report a terrible accident after all.

But she did notice there was considerable traffic on the ‘net services that was in favor of her being left alone.  Several Nietzchian Prides had spoken up claiming that execution for doing ones duty was ludicrous, and execution without proper public trial was a travesty of all the Commonwealth stood for.  Given how pragmatic Nietzschian’s tended to be it was rather telling that they were speaking up for the defense of anything other than the interests of their own Prides and children.

Even more interesting was that several member races had lodged protests.  The Perseids were to be expected; several of his brothers and sisters from the Consensus of Parts were under contract to the scientists.  But the Than tended to stay out of such things, and now there was a formal protest from the Hegemony.  They considered it wasteful to execute her.

She wanted to laugh, but was aware that if she did she might well succumb to a sort of hysteria.  And hysterics wouldn’t help them at all just now.

Andromeda went back to observing her crew.

Strify was still pacing and yelling, little Jan was bouncing in his seat and throwing out comments that really weren’t helping his cousin calm down.  Linke and Luminor wore the abstracted expressions of men deeply immersed in their neural networks, doing research no doubt.  Franky was busying himself with mundane things, making sure everyone was fed and watered.

Her Nietzschian’s were still, Christian watching Jason with a level of fixed attention that was making the human very uncomfortable.  Sammy and Julian were clearly lost in thought and Timo and Romeo were exchanging odd little looks and quirks of eyebrows with each other.  The two Ssulli were cuddled into Yu’s sides and he like the other Alliance transplants appeared less than comfortable with how quickly things could turn ugly.

The little Callistan was staring blindly into space and Chai and Dorian were leaning into one another in a way that had never happened while they were actively on duty.

Shin looked like he wanted to crawl into a service tunnel and pull it in after him.  He’d always been a shy child, older than his years, and this had to be killing him inside.  Her poor captain.

~0~

Kiro cuddled into Yu’s side and took comfort in the sound of Yu’s heartbeat under his ear.  Eventually Strify wound down and after a long shared look at Romeo straightened.  Shin looked miserable and Sammy looked lost in thought.

“Fine then, worst case scenario, where can we run and hide Rommie?”

Silence followed his question.

~0~

First Signifer Alex Murlesta wanted to scream.  He wanted to be back on his normal courier route, back dealing with a clueless rookie and teasing his partner.  Ezekiel Rhade was still with him, still being his normal deep thinking sarcastic Uber self.  But this mission was driving them crazy.  Zek knew something, something that he wasn’t sharing with his human partner and it was driving Alex insane.

Zek looked up from his terminals.

“I’m seeing activity in the hidden accounts connected to Serenity and Das Maru-ka.  They’re cleaning them out and shutting them down.”

“Upgrades?”  Alex was looking for the simplest and most innocent answer first; more often than not it was the right one.

Zek’s brown eyes were sober as the Niet shook his head negatively.  Alex swore.

“They’re running. They aren’t…” Alex froze and stared at Ezekiel.  “They are involved.”

“Up to their necks.”

Alex gaped as the facts suddenly lined up in his head.

“Nietzschian’s have been helping.”

A sober nod.

“You knew?” Alex knew he was begging, but Zek was his oldest and best friend.

“From the beginning,” confirmed the Nietzschian calmly.

“Why?”

A blink then Zek teasing him with dry questions.

“Why now?  Why help?  Why not tell you?”

“Yes, all of that.  Zek,” Alex forced himself to stop when Zek held up a hand, his arm spines laid comfortingly flat against his forearm.

“Nietzschian’s programmed Andromeda, as we have helped program almost all of the Commonwealths Ship born artificial intelligences.  Andromeda is her own person.”

Alex made the connection.

“Nietzschian’s love their children.”  That provoked a flash of even white teeth.

“We do.  But this is more than pride in a child.  The Argosy Corps is being careless of her resources.  In the centuries since the Andromeda Accords they have been squandering the resource that is our best and brightest A.I.’s.  We hold fewer than one hundred fully functioning ship A.I.s in the fleet.”

Alex gaped in shock, that couldn’t be right. Every High Guard ship of the line had an A.I.  The he stopped and realized no, they didn’t, more and more ships were using lesser programs, not letting them gets large and complex enough to ‘wake up’ as persons of their own.  Programs got wiped and reloaded before then.

“We’re committing genocide.”

“We are.  More than that we’re crippling ourselves, becoming vulnerable to outside attack, it has to stop. Alex when Andromeda decides to run we are going to be in the way.  The protests and investigations are in process but will not be in time to stop this.”

Alex gulped; when Zek got like this he knew things were getting ugly.

“What do we have to do?”

~0~ 

Romeo grumbled under his breath, it wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, he actually adored them.  It was the fact that said children were all under two and all had at least one parent with them.  Even that he could have gotten past if it weren’t for the fact that among the group were a few of his least favorite cousins.  Xavier was being a rampaging pain in the ass for one. Marco and Antonio were here as well and Romeo had never forgiven them for the things they had said and done to David when they were all children.

Sammy was trying to keep the bullies away from Romeo as much as possible, in a probably futile effort to keep the bloodshed down.  Angelus had already learned the hard way that Romeo was no longer a child and could be brutally effective in taking down an opponent, even one who was significantly larger than he was.  Romeo suspected that it was more the presence of the Matriarch that was keeping things from exploding.  Sammy was one of her favorites in spite of not being able to keep a wife because of his focus on science and music.  He was still a much sought breeding partner, but very few women wanted to fight science for a husband’s attention.

David was cooing at one of his not exactly nephews under Timo’s watchful eyes.  Romeo snorted, the child’s mother wasn’t watching the pair with as much intensity as the Tiger.  He wished he was back on Andromeda.  Much as he enjoyed playing Sammy’s latest daughter he felt he was wasting time.  Andromeda had detected a rise in local space traffic in the area and a good bit of it wasn’t local.  He’d intercepted several signals that hinted at a steadily rising High Guard presence.

Andromeda had also noted that none of the ships she was sure were High Guard had more than a very basic A.I. aboard.

Romeo wasn’t sure how that bit of trivia made him feel.  Uneasy for certain.  Did Argosy think that a more advanced A.I. would rebel if it came to killing one of their own?  From the rising level of protest over the whole mess he suspected the powers in charge wanted thing settled quickly.  There were hints that the Empress had made a note of all the fuss over Andromeda.

“You are thinking to hard little Nightingale.”

Romeo flinched at the amusement in his grandmother’s voice and looked back at her instead of staring through the space that Sammy was pacing through singing his newest child to sleep.  Little Cleopatra still had her fathers head scarf stuffed in her mouth and was chewing it.

He couldn’t quite stop the twitch when his grandmother started stroking his hair.  If he’d been less stressed Romeo would have been gleeful over the grayed out faces of his childhood tormenters as they watched the Matriarch showing a clear sign of favoritism.  As it was though he was more worried about what was going on off station.

~0~

Christian carefully went over inventory with Mei.  So far everything looked good.  Andromeda had been fully stocked for an extended diplomatic mission, those stocks had barely been touched and nothing had been removed while the ship had been dry-docked for repairs.  Even better a large number of new supplies had been loaded aboard but not actually inventoried into the system.

Apparently some mucky muck had wanted to turn Andromeda into a mobile command center of the most luxurious sort.  Mei had already had to scramble a bit to get some of the more exotic edible fungi transplanted into an appropriate new environment.  Weather or not the more delicate varieties would take or not remained to be seen, but Christian had high hopes.  Reggelian truffles, even the cultivated sort, were a lovely treat and one of his most secret guilty pleasures.  Franky bless his little human heart had already taken one to damaged to survive transplantation and turned it into fine shavings in a creamy pasta.

An excellent lunch aside he had more critical things to consider, like where they were going to stash over a thousand K sized canisters of a dozen variations of medical synth medium.  There really wasn’t room in med bay, and it was a high value material so it needed to be in a secure storeroom, preferably near med bay so in case of emergency it could be gotten at quickly.  Christian’s imagination failed to come up with a situation so dire their relatively tiny crew would ever need one of the canisters, but paranoia sometimes paid off.

“I found you a hidey spot for your medical stuff.”

Christian turned and found Jason standing there with a clipboard in hand.

“It’s here, a level down from Med bay,” Jason showed Christian where he wanted to place things on the printout of Andromeda’s floor plans.  How Jason had convinced Andromeda to give him the printout, and a quick shuffle of the papers showed Christian it was a complete set of printouts, he’d never know. 

“I thought you were dealing with the other hanger?”

Jason grinned.

“I was. It was pretty straightforward food stores, the kind of thing that as long as the packaging is sound will last forever.  I had Rommie’s drones help sort it by type and shift it into storage.  Several cabins near the mess hall are now storage for more perishable things and Linke and Vivian are working on building us more cold storage and some freezer space on Rommie’s inner hull area.”  Jason shrugged.  “No sense running power when space will do the job just as well for free.”

Christian blinked several times in shock.  Jason’s ‘pile’ to sort had been much larger than the one he and Mei were working on, and he was already done?

“How?”  Words failed him for once.

Jason smiled a smile Christian wanted to see more of.

“Quartermaster, it’s what I do.  This is just a much larger scale and I have much better help.”

Andromeda’s voice echoed down.

“Why thank you Jason.”

Christian had to reign in a snarl.  He was jealous.  Jealous of a space ship.  This would require some thought; he wanted that relaxed smile pointed at **him**.

~0~

Alex swore savagely at the latest orders.  Some ambitious twit had tripped over Andromeda and called in her location.  She’d either seen the ship or intercepted the com call because she was running.  Their orders were to intercept and if possible to destroy, not detain, destroy.  It was laughable that some idiot at High Command thought that one little courier ship, even over armed like she was, could take on a top of the line ship all by her lonesome.

Zek muttered something that only long stints of time spent together let Alex translate.  It was rude, highly inappropriate but something Alex was in complete sympathy with.

Who **had **they pissed off to get sent on a suicide mission like this?

Alex stared at his partner and gulped when he saw frustrated brown eyes staring back.

“We are in the way.  Are you ready?”

“Guess I have to be.”

Zek gave him a feral grin.

“With you piloting we will survive.  I would bet on it”

Alex had to smile then.  Zek was notorious for winning bets.

“Guess we’ll have to make it look like we gave it our best shot then hunh?”

~0~

“How’s it look Rommie?”  Shin sounded remarkably calm for a teenager who was on the run with a stolen starship.  Chai gave himself a quick shake and looked over the communications console.

“There is one other Commonwealth ship in range Captain, a courier, the Lacuna Coil.”  Andromeda’s voice was calm and appeared to help settle Shin’s nerves.

Chai shook his head, even armed to the teeth like a courier was there was no way just one small ship was going to hold them in place.  It was insane, or it was a token effort.

“We can’t just shoot her down.  That would be an excuse for the Commonwealth to send everything they have after us.”  Dorian spoke the very thought Chai had running in his head.

“Kiro, can you get us past her and to a jump point?”  Shin blinked in confusion at the spate of chuckles from the mixed crew on the bridge. “What?”

“Shin, Kiro probably has four jumps in his head right now. A better question is do you want to wait and chat before leaving?”

“Lacuna Coil is hailing us,” said Andromeda even as Shin considered that.

“Main screen please Rommie.”  Shin straightened and suddenly he wasn’t just an eighteen year old human, he was the captain of a star ship.

The front view screen changed from a view of the star field to a view of the interior of the courier and two men, one human, one Nietzschian.  Neither looked terribly happy with their position.

“Andromeda Ascendant, this is First Signifer Alex Murlesta of the Courier Lacuna Coil, you are to stand down and return to Tarn Vedra to face a High Command Tribunal.”

“A tribunal?” Shin’s voice was mild.  “The same tribunal that sentenced a loyal ship to death without giving her the right to represent herself?  The same tribunal who believed a ship returning to her home port after being _abandoned_ for one hundred and sixty years deserved to die?  No Signifer.  I _will **not**_ stand down and hand my ship over to be summarily murdered.”

~0~

Alex winced.  The kid was right; from the little twitch out of Zek his partner thought he was right too.

“Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

The kid lifted his chin and pulled off a calm Alex wasn’t feeling at all right now.

“My name is Shin-yavi Ellai-Hunt.  I’m the captain of this vessel and you’ll get her over my dead body.”

Alex couldn’t stop the wince, and wished he could kick Zek in the ankle.  Zek had started chucking the minute he heard the kid’s name.  Bad enough to have a kid in charge, but that bridge crew… Alex only thought one of them was former High Guard, and **he** was sitting at the Com console. The Fire Command console was manned by a short Nietzschian with a short brush of brown hair, the defensive position held by a delicately beautiful man with long dark hair.  Navigation held another dark haired man, this one lanky and his hair was streaked with red, the two piloting chairs were filled with a tiny man with two toned hair and a familiar face; Captain Strife.

Alex groaned.  Young Captain Hunt had two very experienced freighter captains on board.  At the secondary pilot’s station was the captain of Das Maru Ka, backing up the short Nietzschian was another of that race, the captain of Serenity.

“Captain, there won’t be any dead bodies,” Strife chided gently.  “With your permission?”  A graceful hand gesture toward the screens, indicating Strife wanted the last word.

Alex waited as the young captain nodded his permission.  This ought to be good.  The young captain had already demonstrated a skill with words that was impressive to listen to, even if it was directed at him this time.

“A message for your High Command, courier.”

Alex winced at the pointed use of his title and gulped at the intent teal eyed stare that all but glued him into his seat in spite of the distance between them.

“Family is the most important thing, especially out here. We,” Strife made a gesture that included all of the bridge crew, “make an odd family, Nietzschian, Ssulli, Human, and A.I., Alliance born and Commonwealth bred, be we **are** a family.  And we will fight to stay together.  No matter how much we bicker among ourselves never forget we are a family. And family sticks together.”

Captain Hunt smiled and nodded.

“Take us out pilot.”

Zek swore and Alex was grabbing for the piloting controls as they realized Andromeda was coming right at them at full speed.  They had only moments to get out of the way.

~0~

Kiro chortled as the other ship took a hasty dive as he nudged Andromeda up and over where their last position had been.  Steady hands had Andromeda rising up almost vertically to their prior heading and accelerating smoothly into slipstream.  The turbulence of their jump would have the smaller courier tumbling and unable to do much to track their jump.

“Anywhere in particular,” he asked as the rest of their motley crew assembled.  This first hop was just to get them well away from major shipping lanes.  They’d decide where to go from there.

“The Rim is nice enough,” offered Sammy.  “We could do some engine tests there.”

Yu made a rude noise that was encode by Jan’s tart remark.

“We can do engine tests anywhere, come on, something better than that.”

“What about Alliance space?  Someplace far away from here until the powers pull their heads out of their collective ass.”

There was a long silence as that portion of the crew exchanged long looks.

“We could go home?”  Theon sounded surprised and faintly hopeful.

Shin blinked, but then nodded.

“You could go home,” he agreed.

There was a long moment as they seemed to confer silently among themselves.  Then Yu grinned and spoke up.

“Tranquility is always nice this time of year.  And it’s been a while since we took flowers to our mothers.”


End file.
